Watertown City Council (Tuesday February 10, 2026)

I'd like to call the meeting to order. This is the meeting of the Watertown City Council of February 10, 2026. This meeting is being broadcast and recorded by Watertown Cable Access. It is a hybrid meeting. The Zoom information as well as telephone numbers and an email address are available on the city website. So the first item on the agenda is roll call. Please call the roll, Council Clerk.

Councillor Bates.

Present.

Feltner?

Present.

Councilor Gannon?

Present.

Councilor Gardner?

Present.

Councilor Izzo?

Present.

Councilor Offei? Present. Councilor Palomba? Present. Councilor Piccirilli? Present. President Sideris?

Thank you. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is public forum. There is an agenda item. Can you turn that up? The public forum, I know there's a public hearing scheduled. That's when there's going to be public discussion about this, the one agenda item that I believe most people are here for. This gentleman doesn't want to stay, so please identify yourself for the record. and you are allowed two minutes per council rules.

Russell Rico, Fayette Street and Watertown. Thank you, Mr. President. By the way, let me put my glasses on so I can see this. Okay. Okay, Mr. President and city councilors, tonight this council is being used to deliberate a national issue that has nothing to do with governing the city of Watertown. I request that the council reject this regardless of how well intentioned this issue is. The council is overloaded with important local issues. Let's not open the floodgates with issues that have nothing to do with governing the city of Watertown. National issues should only be on the agenda if there is a direct action needed related to governing the city of Watertown. Let me give you an example of a national issue that is directly related to Watertown. mail-in voting. When I brought mail-in voting to the council, I showed evidence that Watertown's voting list was not properly purged for at least nine years. there was direct action to be taken locally by this council.

I know those of you that are here tonight, you know, and those who are here tonight, I understand it's a great issue and well-intended and so forth and so on, but we can't take resources and focus away from true issues directly to Watertown, again, where this council can take action. This is not a, national issues, most of the time they can't take action. Now, as a WA veteran myself, I know far too well war is the testament of the stupidity of man. However, this council is not the forum to discuss this issue. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Is there anyone else that wishes to speak in public forum? please identify yourself for the record.

Hi, my name is Adrian Hauk. I'm a member of the Watertown Bike Pet Committee. I'm here today to thank everyone who was part of the heroic snow removal efforts that we took over the last two weeks. I think there was a lot of work and a lot of people really did their part there, including town workers, contractors, a lot of businesses. and private residence. A few people, a minority, unfortunately did not take part and that's making getting around the city very difficult for many people at the moment, especially if you are in a wheelchair, have a stroller or any other disability. So what I would like to ask from the city council and the city president, the city manager, would be to please make available the funds for appropriate code enforcement officers so they could come out.

and make sure that we can get around major arteries in Watertown such as Arsenal Street, Main Street safely after storms and that we can follow up with anyone who is being warned. on the first offense proactively without relying on private residents to come back out and call these people in a second time via 311. So thank you for those efforts. I appreciate you hopefully making those funds available and hoping to get everyone on board on making us a walkable city for the years to come. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else that wishes to be heard in public forum, either here or at home? Seeing none, I close the public hearing and move on to the next item on the agenda, which is the examination of minutes. Can I get a motion on the minutes of January 27?

Mr. President, I make a motion that we adopt the minutes of January 27th as written.

Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Thank you. President's report. I have first a request from the Committee on Budget and Fiscal Oversight that the presentation of the recommendations on the fiscal year 2027 to 2031 Capital Improvement Program be moved from February 24th to March 10th. So I'd like to see if I could get a motion from the city council.

So moved.

Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. I have a couple items to report. I just want to report a couple of things that have been happening with the schools. the Lieutenant Governor and many secretaries under that the cabinet came and visited the city on Thursday, the manager and several members including some city councilors and State Representative Owens and Senator Brunsburger were here for a celebration. They provided they had a large grant that we got a piece of and it was for our gardening, composting, farming program and they got to tour the new freight farm and it was a pretty exciting event and they were all very happy with what they saw so we want to thank them for choosing Watertown to give the announcement of this grant and again, taking part in things that go on in the city.

And then on another note with regard to the high school, Steve Magoon had arranged, had gotten a request from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council to take a look at the new high school, in particular their sustainability team. There was approximately seven members that came in on last Thursday. Again, the manager, the superintendent, and I and staff from the planning department were there to take them around. We had the sustainability consultant, the architect, all answering questions in particular their focus on what we were doing for the sustainability and how we got there and how we designed it. It was a very well-liked tour. And I just want to point out one more thing. I asked our social media, our digital media coordinator to join us.

and she joined us and took pictures and I want to announce that as of one o'clock on Monday afternoon we had 46,000 views of those photos of our high school so congratulations you know to I think that's a I think that's an important message to send around the community that we're being watched. We also got a request from Madison Park High School, which is the only voc tech high school in Boston that wants to bring their science class out. they can't come until we're done but again we're generating a lot of interest in what we do here in Watertown in particular with regards to our Climate and Energy Goals, and I think that's laudable and I wanted to take the opportunity to say that here. That's the end of my president's report.

Item number six is public hearings. And 6A is a public hearing and vote on a proposed loan order that the sum of $300,000 is appropriated to pay costs of purchasing a spark charge level three mobile electric vehicle charging platform for the police station. Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Mr. President. As I noted in the first reading last week, items 6A as well as 6B are designed to set us up to be able to use electric vehicles for patrol vehicles in the police department. and that that particular option requires us to be able to do some fast turnaround and fast charging and that these two items are supportive of that. Denise Moroney from our public buildings team and Silas, our energy manager, have a little bit of information they'd like to share with you on these. There were some questions at the that I received after the first reading and I wanted to be able to have them provide that to you. I think they have like a eight slide presentation that can just give you a little bit of background on this one as well as the next item so that hopefully it helps if the council and the president are okay with that, helps address these items as we go into public hearing on each of these two items. So if it's okay, Mr. President, I'd like to allow our public buildings team to share that information, thank you.

Okay, thank you. City Council President and City Manager. My name is Denise Maroney, Director of Public Buildings. and I'm going to present a very brief slideshow with Silas Feiler, our Assistant Director for Energy Management on this funding request. So we have two funding requests before you tonight as the second reading for electric vehicle charging funds. and the first item is for a $300,000 loan request for a battery trailer which would serve as a level three fast charger for the police vehicles. that they currently have. And then in the future, we would also use them in other ways in the city, which I'll go over in the next few slides. So this just gives you the specifications for the unit.

So what it basically is, is it's a large battery on wheels. And you can charge up to 10. 10 charges with the battery fully charged. And the basic thing is there are four ports on the unit. And we would be able to use it, like I said, for the police. But then in the future, once we get that second item that we're requesting as the level three infrastructure, built into the police station parking lot, then this can be used elsewhere in the city as well. So the pricing overview, we had the option of leasing the unit for $10,000 a month, but knowing that we had a CIP request through the police department of $1.5 million for level three charging at the police station.

We wanted to take advantage of using $300,000 of those funds to go towards a portable unit. and this portable unit, the highlights related to it, the max 300 battery can recharge with our existing level two EV charges that we installed at the police station. and it's a portable EV charger that would be used for the police vehicles. It's readily available. Once we get the funding, we can put an order in and have it fairly quickly. the flexibility and use on the road. If we have a disabled city vehicle, it can be used to charge somebody on the fly. and it would be placed on a trailer and be able to be hooked up to an F-250 or an F-150 and brought around the city to be used where it's needed.

It also would provide us with continuity of city operations during a power outage and in cases where we don't have a generator on a building to charge our EV chargers. that are at each of the buildings now. This could be used to charge EV charges where we don't have a generator. Events support, so say in Fair on the Square or other special community events and emergencies, we could use this as well. And then it also helps support our climate energy plan. any questions about the SPAC charge unit?

Thank you. Before we ask questions from the council, this is a public hearing. If there's any member of the public here or at home that wishes to be heard, please raise your hand. please go to the podium and identify yourself for the record.

Elodia Thomas, 67 Marion Road. Denise, if I understand it, the advantage of this is that it's portable and can roam the town, so to speak, in an emergency with four ports. The other three units are stationary?

Correct.

Okay, because I did some research on the cost in the other three units. Nothing is specified in terms of the brand, and it seemed kind of expensive, so I don't know if you can speak to that.

so I'll get to the other more.

Yeah, the other one is a separate agenda item. Is there anyone else that wishes to be heard on this particular item? Seeing none, I close the public hearing and ask first for a motion from the City Council.

I make a motion that we approve the loan order for $300,000 for the Spark Change Level 3 mobile electric charger.

is there a second? Second. Discussion, questions? Councilor Feltner, I'm sorry, Councilor, yeah, Councilor Feltner.

Thank you. Do we have an expected life of this mobile platform?

So we did ask that question when we met with Spark Charge, and they had said it would be approximately 10 years.

Okay, so sounds great. I didn't know if there were any, with technology changing fairly quickly, there any concerns about future proofing or, but not at this time, sounds like.

In general, it's a large battery with an EV charger on the back side of it. The EV charger itself is an open source one, so we could actually pull that out and put another one on if we really wanted to. I don't really see a reason for it. With the technology changes it's probably the connectors. Right now, we're probably going to go with the CCS. But as Tesla's chargers start to become more and more popular, we may go with an NACS connector. it matches whatever we need to match it with. The connectors are interchangeable, it's just the cable and the processor on the unit deals with all those.

Thank you. So would the connectors come out of the police budget if it needs to be changed? Or how are you managing that? It just depends on the vehicle.

Over time the cables are going to break down just like the cables out here at the library and we'll replace them about every five to seven years.

Great, and I was just, I know it's a mobile unit, but do we have a sense of where it's gonna be stored generally?

It would be stored at the police parking lot for now, and then once they get their level three permanent infrastructure installed, then we could either have it at the Starrett property or at the DPW or at Parker.

Great, so in the last question, so it's a level three capability, but it's compatible with the level two chargers.

So it would be recharged by the level two chargers that we have on site at the police station now?

Oh, okay. And it said 575 per charge or recharge. What does that mean?

That's if you needed to have the batteries recharged by them. Okay. If they had to come out, they would charge 575. Okay, thank you.

Gannon.

Yes, thank you, Mr. President. Just a quick question. As someone who doesn't know the technology of electric vehicle charging, I note that the state of purpose is for police vehicles. Would the charging technology be compatible with electric vehicles the city fleet presently has or is about to acquire? Yes.

Yep. It would serve all our fleet vehicles that are electric. Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions?

Sorry, okay. I guess for me, the one thing I'm wondering about is, have we thought about a viability of the company?

Spark Charge started out as a small company coming out of Greentown work. coming out of Greentown Works and they were actually on Shark Tank and got a $30 million grant. They also just in December made a large contract with Zipcar in Boston, in East Boston. So they're charging a bunch of the, they've got a whole setup for that there. At this point, they look like a reasonable company that's gonna be around for a few years, but the technology is pretty simple. I'm sure we could be able to deal with it as we go.

Okay. It just seems like a long commitment to me in a sense that, I mean, I'm looking at your funding history right now and for a company, as you mentioned, they were on Shark Tank. They initially started off as a B2C company and it didn't work, so they kind of pivoted to where they are right now. there is a risk with your business model. And the reason why they shifted to a B2B is because they're trying to raise money to make it work. at this point with the current funding status that they have right now, I personally don't I think you're talking 10 years of commitment to this company that may not be around, which is very possible. Most startups I think the statistics is about only 10% of startups actually work. So what happens if it doesn't actually

So we're purchasing this outright for $300,000. So yes, there'd be a relationship with them as far as making sure that the system works for us for 10 years, because that's what they have told us it would last. but I am sure that there will be other entries into this market that we can work with also in the future as, you know, alternatives to Spark Charge, say, God forbid, they go out of business or something.

So I guess what I'm asking is if the systems break down or something like that after they've gone out of business, are you expecting other companies to come in to be able to fix those problems?

We would seek out another company to fix it, sure.

Any other questions? Mr. Manager.

I want to address the Councilor's comments because I do think it's important. We spent a lot of time with the public buildings team discussing the possibilities of this and I think it is key that the that the connectors and pieces are interchangeable with equipment that is out there on the market. outside of this company. So if something this company provided failed and the company failed too, the likelihood that someone in this electric vehicle space can work to do this, I think, is pretty likely. I do think that... One of the things that we as an organization have to consider is that Watertown has made a choice to be a climate leader, and that means we are probably going to be on the edge of the technology side on this in a number of circumstances.

were first to do net zero lead platinum for high school, were first to do moving a police fleet significantly to electric vehicles. Doing that is going to mean that we are going to have to probably find some creative solutions that involve technologies that are still in the earlier stages than communities that sit back and choose not to do that. as I read and I embrace our climate plan I think it's asking us to do this. In this particular case I'll share the good news is that in this case we are putting together an agreement with a Massachusetts-born and Massachusetts-based company that is taking a shot at a technology that I think has a lot of potential in the climate space. I think the biggest risk right now is that, as Silas explained, that the charging ends change from one protocol to another. just because the manufacturers are going in that direction.

And the good news is there's about $100 adapter out there that can solve that problem currently. My wife's non-Tesla car has one now and it works just fine going one direction. You can go one direction or the other to connect between those two. So I think we are in about as good of a space as we can be if we are making the commitment to being able to have the flexibility to do portable charging. To me, what was really appealing here was that it would allow us the ability to to stage charging in a power outage, stage charging in a circumstance where we have police doing some sort of a long response in a location where they're going to have vehicles out at an offsite location for a while. We're trying to offset all of the circumstances where we say, okay, in a community, of our size, which is physically very small, which is a good thing for this.

If we move patrol vehicles towards electric, how do we make sure that we don't end up in a situation where it leaves a hole in our ability to do policing? The Chief and I, both of whom ourselves have been electric vehicle early adopters, have tried to think of every imaginable challenge we can have in this circumstance, and this is a potential solution that our public buildings team came up with that I've come to appreciate. So thank you, Mr. President.

Any other questions? I just have one question. Does anybody else have this?

So we said the Zipcars, but no other communities that we're aware of have purchased. In California they have, but not anything local in Mass. That we're aware of.

Another first.

Yes.

I have a motion and a second. Can I get a roll call, please?

Councilor Gardner? Yes. Councilor Izzo? Yes. Councilor Offei? Yes. Councilor Palomba. Yes. Councilor Piccirilli. Yes. Councilor Bays. Yes. Councilor Feltner. Yes. Councilor Gannon. Yes. President Sideris.

Yes, thank you. Next item is 6B, which is a public hearing and vote on a proposed loan order that the sum of $900,404 is appropriated to pay costs of purchasing Level 3 three level three electric vehicle chargers for the police station. Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Mr. President. As noted, the capital improvement plan line 109 had identified funding for electric vehicle charging. We ended up splitting line 109 using some of that money for the previous item, the rest for the more conventional in-place items, which despite the large number are lower than our original capital plan budget number and I'll turn it over to the public billing team if it's okay with you Mr. President to share a little bit more about the longer term level three and the potential to pursue some grant money to offset the installation. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you again, and thank you for approval of the previous funding request. So this is for the permanent level three EV charger infrastructure, which would include three dual port, H.Y.C. 400 Alpetronic units. These would be used solely by the police department in the fenced in area behind the police station. So I have a drawing here, and I know Councilor Feltner was asking about the specific unit that we're specifying, so that's here. If you have any questions on that, you can ask. and then this here is the drawing that shows where they would be laid out so we have the three down here in the lower middle of the Plan, the three dual head units that would be up against the back of the building. And then the pad mounted transformer is off in the top of the

Plan, and that would be, we have asked that to be relocated to the grassy area so it's not taking up a parking space. And then we have... the breakdown of the charges for the $900,000 request, the engineering and permitting, trenching and backfilling, conduit and wiring, civil works, electrical equipment, and the EV charging stations themselves. So as you can see, for a level three EV charging station, for three of them it's $555,000. So us having a unit that's a portable battery charger in the first funding request for 300,000 is, In our mind, it was a great idea and a great opportunity to have the portable charging. These go hand in hand because the first request kind of bridges that gap between when we can get these permanent charges installed.

and we are hoping to get make ready funds from Eversource. Eversource goes in and out of funding those types of projects. When we first sent this request to you, they were open for new installation requests and grant program requests, and now they've closed it again. So we're going to attempt to get that going again with calls to different contacts that we have within Eversource. and push this forward so that we get a funding reimbursement for these funds of $900,404.

I think there was a question about the brand?

The brand, yep. So this here is the brand. It's Alpetronics. So this was a cheaper version as far as I understand it from what ChargePoint has. And Silas knows more about the specific units that are being specified here. So if you want to. Speak to any questions?

So this is in the back of the police station in a fenced-in area. It's for the fleet. It's meant only for the fleet, so this is not a public-facing type of pieces of equipment. We decided not to go with ChargePoint because it's not a public-facing one. You don't need all the details of using a credit card, using whatever method you need to do with that. The Alphatronics has a Charger that matches up with the police patrol vehicles that the chief is buying. This matches up for its highest charge for those vehicles. So we're trying to match the vehicles and the charger to charge the vehicles as fast as they can so that they can use it for their daily routines.

Thank you. This is also a public hearing. If there's any member of the public here or at home that wishes to raise to speak. Libby Shaw, you are allowed to speak.

Thank you. I'm just very interested. It was mentioned that these units are going to be moved off of the Gannon, Gannon, Gannon, Gannon, Gannon, Gannon, Gannon, Gannon, Gannon, Gannon, that if there are any shade trees nearby, that the root zones of those shade trees are not being impacted by this move. It might be useful if that if it is going to move near a shade tree that that Mike Macelli, our tree warden, be be involved in planning for this. Thank you.

Thank you. Sure, we can make sure that we're protecting the shade trees.

Is there anyone else that wishes to be heard here or at home?

Well, thank you, Libby, for mentioning the tree issue. It was my first thought when you said it's being moved off cement onto grass, so you're adding, you're decreasing the amount of permeable surface and that's a concern always. I'm Susan Falcoff.

We forgot that. just so everybody is aware that area doesn't really have any major trees there and the police department needs every single parking space possible so I'm sure public buildings will be able to make sure that we're not disturbing were disturbing as little of the green space as possible. So I now close the public hearing and ask for a motion from the city council.

Mr. President, I make a motion that we approve the loan order for $900,404 for the level three chargers.

Is there a second? Second. Discussion? Feltner.

Thank you. If you indulge me to educate myself a little, on the Eversource Supply Transformer, it looks like Is that going to look like something we see now on the sidewalks, about that size for around the lights?

It's probably a little smaller than what you see for a building supply, you know, even outside of a building, but yeah, it's the boxes. It's a vault.

Okay, and do you know, are those paintable on the outside? Yeah, most of them are. And can you light me on the...

I'm not sure the transformer's paintable, but the control box is. There's two boxes up there. One's the transformer. the Eversource will own the transformer so I don't think we can paint it unless Eversource gives us permission. The control box we own, we should be able to paint that.

Okay, thank you. And the handhold, is that an underground supply source or is that above ground where you trench across the parking lot there, the proposed handhold?

So the trench obviously will be below ground, the handhold will be above ground, but the trench itself that you see the red line on here is all going to be below ground.

Okay, so the handhold is something you can reach if it snows or whatever, it's high enough that, okay. And the last question I was just, the drawing showing the trench out to Main Street. and it says utility poll. Is there a poll there now or are we anticipating a new poll going in or?

I'm sorry, it's not on this picture. It goes out along the driveway to the police station and it comes to a new pole that we're putting on the outside. We did not want to use the a poll that the police station already uses because it has the 911 on it. We didn't want to disturb that particular poll. So we're going to put a new poll out on the edge of the street.

Okay, I was just getting a sense since the historic, New England historic property is there, what it's going to end up looking like. Do you think there'll be two poles next to each other or?

Yeah. it's right on the edge of that historic property and the police station, more towards the police station. It's gonna be covered by, from the historic property, you won't be able to see it because there's trees there. That helps.

Okay, I guess as long as the trees don't interfere with, or it's all coming from underground and up the pole, is that the idea, so there's not wires overhead?

There's no wires overhead, it's all underground.

Okay, thank you.

and I would assume they're going to have to come to us for a grant of location as well. To come to us for a grant of location. So we'll have another opportunity to scrutinize. Thank you. Any other questions? Councilor Gannon.

Yes, and it might have been answered before, but I just wanted to clarify it. So the tree line along the rare yards of Puritan Road and along the property leading to Acton Street. I went to the Brown School as a child. I don't want to say how long ago, that tree line was really an effective part of that property and I just want to make sure when the trench or the supply trench for Eversaurus is constructed to power the charters. Did you say that some trees were going to be eliminated or just want to clarify? No, it would go all up the driveway of the police station. OK, so there's a little pathway that goes down on the border between the Puritan Road side and the police station leading to Acton. So I see the red line there.

So are those going to be above ground trenching?

No, that's all below ground.

And there's grass right there and not trees themselves? As far as I understand, it's all driveway asphalt. Okay, so it's going to be on the asphalt because the line in the photo or the schematic that you sent to us has the line going through the tree line.

Oh, is it just for the comments?

It's the slide, the next one. I think what you're talking about is in the parking lot itself where it goes over the cars there. This is behind the police station, not...

So it's going to cross the path. I could ask you to go to the slide that's previous to this one. Maybe the next one down then.

Yeah.

I don't have a slide of it.

The next one down.

I can try to find it.

So while Each of the lines you're seeing here are underground. If you see behind the building, there was that sort of curved path there. It's gonna go underneath that. It's gonna cross the police fence underneath it. to the first parking space at the parking lot and then travel from that side of the parking lot over to the building side of that parking lot, and that's where those electronics are going to be.

Not where the charges are, but where the trench starts from Acton Street. at the Main Street? At Acton Street. I'm sorry, that is Main Street.

It doesn't go on Acton Street. It's not even close to Acton Street. So from Main Street, there will be a pole. The wire will come down the pole. and go underground. We'll probably run it under the driveway for the police station.

Okay, so it's going to be solely under the driveway itself? Yeah. Existing driveway. Good, thank you.

Are there any other questions? Councilor Feltner.

Thank you, sorry, I was glad to hear it's not ChargePoint because, inform me, on ChargePoint, can anyone see where those are since those are generally public when you have the app and you're looking for ChargePoint, or do the owners have to add them to ChargePoint map? I mean, it won't apply here because we're not going with ChargePoint. I think it's great that you're using the other Company, but I know we have a charge point in Watertown.

We won't be able to use these, so they won't be on a map.

But the other charge points we have in Watertown, you can find those?

Yeah, the other 32 charge points that we have in town, yeah, they're generally on a map.

Okay, great, thanks.

and with the time exclusions because some of them are at schools.

Okay, if there are no further questions, can I get a roll call please?

Councilor Izzo?

Yes.

Councilor Offei? Yes. Councilor Palomba? Yes. Piccirilli, yes, Councilor Bays, yes, Councilor Feltner, yes, Councilor Gannon, yes, Councilor Gardner, yes, President Sideris, yes, thank you.

Next item on the agenda is 6C, which is a citizen petition. It's a public hearing on a request to call on federal leaders to support nuclear disarmament. I'm going to read the resolution for the record but before I do that I just want to say that I was requested to put this on by a city councilor and pursuant to our I felt that this was not appropriate at the you need a lot of our time as much as possible and we typically have not put these types of things on the agenda but this was done by the citizen petition

method in the city charter where they had to gather 150 signatures to be certified by the city clerk. There were over 500 signatures gathered. the city charter also requires that 10 people, the first 10 people that signed the petition get a letter in the mail notifying them of this hearing, which we did. the only difference is that none of these sheets had 10 people in a row so we picked sheets and took the first 10 people we came to so that requirement has also been met. I want to say that during the public hearing We're going to be following the council rules, which is you are allowed to speak for two minutes. The clock is there. The yellow light comes on when you have a minute. And I will speak very... very cognizant of the time. Please identify yourself for the record. That's part of the process.

please be respectful whether we agree or disagree with you or whether you agree with your neighbors. I would like to keep this as respectful as possible. where we're here to get the job done and we want to do that in a respectful manner. So I will read the resolution. It says, whereas since the height of the Cold War, The United States and Russia have dismantled more than 50,000 nuclear warheads, but approximately 13,100 weapons still exist. far more destructive than those that killed hundreds of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in 1945, posing an intolerable risk to human survival. and whereas approximately 95% of these weapons are in the hands of the United States and Russia,

while the remainder are held by seven other countries, namely China, France, Israel, India, North Korea, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. and whereas the detonation of even a small number of these weapons would kill hundreds of millions of people, cause unimaginable environmental damage, and result in the starvation of billions from catastrophic climate change, and whereas in underground silos, the United States maintains several hundred nuclear missiles on hair trigger alert, capable of being launched in minutes, which greatly increases the risk of accidental or mistaken or unauthorized launch. and whereas the United States continues to reserve the right to use nuclear weapons first and the U.S. President has the sole and unchecked authority to order the use of nuclear weapons,

and whereas, despite the popular notion that nuclear weapons arsenals exist solely to guarantee they will never be used, on multiple occasions, nuclear armed states have advanced to the brink of using these weapons and their use was narrowly averted and whereas the growing climate crisis is stressing communities around the world, intensifying the likelihood of conflict, while tensions between countries with nuclear weapons increases the possibility of nuclear war, and whereas the climate crisis, future pandemics and numerous human security and social justice concerns highlight the need for greater investment in our communities, and whereas the full cost of US nuclear weapons in 2023 was estimated at $540 billion, and the US plans to spend $1.7 trillion by 2046

to replace its entire nuclear arsenal with more advanced and usable versions. And whereas the US taxpayers spend roughly $10.3 million every hour of every day to maintain our nuclear arsenal and its associated costs for which Watertown taxpayers paid $4.77 million in 2023. and therefore be it resolved that the city of Watertown calls on the United States to lead a global effort to prevent nuclear war by one actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, two, renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first, three, ending the sole unchecked authority of any president to launch a nuclear attack, four, taking US nuclear weapons off hair trigger alert, and five, canceling the plan

to replace its entire arsenal with enhanced weapons and be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution will be sent to U.S. Representative Catherine Clark, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Edward Markey, and there is one mistake here because it says to President Joseph Biden, but that has changed. We will revise that to have it read correctly. Resolution. I now open it up for public hearing and please raise your hand and I will recognize you one at a time. Front row.

I am Joseph Gerson and I live on Washburn Street. I helped to launch the nuclear weapons freeze movement and led the successful opposition that prevented Boston Harbor from being transformed into a nuclear weapons base. City Council testimony by a former senior naval officer who elaborated the frightening history of naval nuclear weapons accidents was critical to that success. I've written and edited five books on the history and consequences of nuclear weapons, and I was a member of the atomic bomb victims delegation that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year. False nuclear alerts and nuclear weapons accidents have brought us to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Six times, responding to false alerts, the U.S. and Russia prepared to launch nuclear weapons. best known and most dangerous was when sunlight triggered a false alarm in Russia. A Soviet colonel had doubts, disobeyed orders, and did not alert Moscow.

Soon thereafter, a massive NATO exercise led Russians to believe that a US first strike was imminent, and the Soviet military mobilized to retaliate. once a wrong cassette was placed in a nuclear weapons computer system, and Hawaii was thrown into panic when the emergency alert system warned ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii seek immediate shelter, this is not a drill. U.S. nuclear weapons accidents include nuclear warheads being accidentally banged against ships in U.S. ports, a nuclear armed bomber crashing in Greenland and spreading radioactive debris, and US warplanes crashing over Spain with a nuclear weapon lost for two months. As this list enumerates, The United States and Russia together have had more than 80 nuclear weapons accidents. Japanese A-bomb survivors teach that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist. Popular Pressures won the test ban and nuclear weapons reduction treaties.

By joining other communities in endorsing this resolution, you can build on that history and help to ensure human survival. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you. If you have comments, please bring them to the council clerk and we will place them in the record as well. Please identify.

Thank you. Jackie Gross, Belmont Street. The introduction you guys already heard. I wanted to...

Please speak directly into the microphone.

So after I speak, there'll be speakers from the rest of the group that we've worked together. We've collected over 500 signatures. We have a lot of people that are very passionate about this issue. It is, after hearing the first speaker, the guy who came here first, and then listening to what you're saying, I understand that we probably don't have a lot of support for this, and I just wanna say, This is our lives. I have a grandchild that's going to be born soon, and I want this world to be a safer place. I think this is a local issue, and I hope that you all will maybe think differently about what your role is in this. And I want to thank you for hearing us. I want to thank you. We've had a lot of

separate meetings with almost all of you. And we've had webinars. When we went out to collect signatures, we got a lot of support for this. So I hope that you guys will be brave and I hope you will support this and I hope you will listen to my fellow people, workers, whatever. Thank you.

Yes.

Hello, my name is Lillian Koizumi and I live on Hall Ave. And I just also want to appreciate the opportunity to share today with all the wonderful friends from our Watertown group and an opportunity to speak today. You might be wondering why this issue is important right now. We all know that the potential consequences of a nuclear war include immediate deaths to millions of people and subsequent deaths of most of the world population. due to climate degradation, radiation, and effects on food production. The reason we must talk about it now is because of the serious dangers of the use of these weapons as countries struggle with their enemies in wars such as those between Russia and Ukraine, India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran. In addition, treaties that offer some protection against wars have been terminated and there may well be a resumption of testing of weapons with harmful effects of these testings.

At this time, the U.S. is planning a major upgrade of our nuclear arsenal, and just last week, the U.S. and Russia allowed their last nuclear arms control treaty, also known as New START, to expire. We must interrupt the cycle we are in with active talks about reduction of weapons and broaden these dialogues to an international level. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, in the back.

So many people say this isn't a local issue.

Please identify yourself on the record.

Jean Truebeck. I live on Arsenal Street. It's true that nuclear disarmament is a global existential issue. It's a national issue, but it's also a local issue. It affects all of our lives. and we take on global issues. For example, climate change. Most of this meeting so far has been about the major steps we're taking to prevent drastic climate change. the Climate and Energy Plan, the new schools, all of the conversions to electric vehicles, are what we're doing.

If Watertown were the only city or town to do this, it would have no effect. and if Watertown were the only city or town to adopt a position on nuclear disarmament, it would have no effect. But we are not alone. that combination of working together with the like-minded people of the country and of the world can have an effect. Not if every small group says, oh, it's not our issue. It can have an effect if we all take action and do it. So far over 20 towns and cities in Massachusetts have adopted this resolution.

our neighbors, Boston, Cambridge, Newton, Brookline, Needham, in addition to Marshfield, Cummington, Goshen. Sorry, your time is up.

Thank you. Next, anyone else?

Hello, everybody. Todd Gross on Belmont Street. And I'm going to be talking about the nuclear deterrence theory very briefly because that's the theory that's used to justify continuing to make these weapons. The idea basically is if other countries have them, we should have them and we'll all act as a deterrent against each other. we believe that that is actually a fear-based lie that we've told ourselves for a long time. We don't think that nuclear weapons make us safe, and I will make a couple points about why I think so. One of them is that deterrence practices put people at risk. The states that base their security on having nuclear weapons they had to maintain the credibility of their threat, they have to threaten other people with it. So we have an atmosphere where there's threats.

The second argument is that, there's an assumption by this theory that all leaders or users or people who control weapons will act in a rational manner if there's a crisis when they have limited information and maybe very few seconds to make a major decision. We're afraid that that is really an assumption that we can't Trust, that actually there might be some leader, and we have some dangerous people sometimes as leaders, there might be a leader that might just decide I'm gonna disregard that view that nuclear weapons, the rational view that nuclear weapons shouldn't be used, and I'm going to launch that. And as Joe Gerson talked about, there have been many many situations where there've been almost things happening where the weapons were used.

And we were saved by luck and somebody intervening. but my feeling and our committee's feeling is that you can't base a nuclear policy on luck. I'm sorry, your time is up.

Okay. Yes, in the back row, the back row.

Hello, I'm Steven Steadman from Common Street here in Watertown. As many of you in the room know, I spent my career as a nuclear physicist at MIT, and I've used that knowledge to be of help to the town of Watertown. We physicists, nuclear physicists, realize right after Hiroshima, that using of nuclear weapons would be a total catastrophe. And it's been a very active effort on our part ever since then to try to bring that message home. People often think of nuclear weapons in the like of Hiroshima. The reality is the present-day nuclear weapons or thermonuclear weapons are thousands of times stronger than what you saw in Hiroshima. The bottom line is there are no winners.

there's only losers in any nuclear war, only losers. And so the bottom line is is rational people believe that we should not, to just get rid of them and just rid ourselves of that threat. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes.

I'm Stephanie. Can you hear me okay? Pull it down. Is this better? Okay, thank you. I'm Stephanie Torello. I live on Pleasant Street, and I want to say thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. Nuclear disarmament must be considered a local issue in addition to a national issue. We in Watertown know that weapons are developed, stored, and transported and tested in specific communities, putting nearby residents at risk. We have already experienced the loss of land that can come from having a nuclear facility in our city. It took a long time with great expense for the city to clean up the radioactive mess from the arsenal. and this was small compared of what would happen now.

We should not wish this on any community. Radiation exposure and contamination affect local people. Land, and Water for Generations. And I ask you please to protect me and others in Watertown and in other communities. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Yes, please step up.

Good evening, my name is Nathaniel Harris and I live on Franklin Street and I'm in an awkward position tonight because my friend Ted German was going to read a brief paragraph but at the last minute he fell ill. and had to leave. So he asked me to read it and I agreed, but I have forgotten my glasses. My delivery will be halting but brief, and I ask your indulgence. Nuclear weapons and their storage of nuclear waste have already harmed millions of people for decades in the process of their development and testing. And of course, it killed millions with their use in World War II Japan. the huge expenditure of maintaining and updating nuclear weapons continues to waste taxpayer money that could have been spent on helpful programs that deal with social problems.

In fact, nuclear weapons are not only threatening our existence on this planet, but they are useless against today's 21st century threats from climate change, terrorism, and cyber attacks. threats to our safety and well-being. In the current international climate, the existence of nuclear weapons can make conflict worse. For example, during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the threat of using nuclear weapons was used by Russia to limit the capacity of states in NATO to respond to acts of blatant aggression by Russia. Thank you.

Anyone else here or at home? Yes.

Hi, my name is Millie English and I live on Belmont Street. And I remembered my glasses. Negotiations are always better than threats. We should be working with all countries to establish international agreements and verifiable processes for monitoring the dismantling of nuclear weapons. it seems a wiser course to rely upon negotiations, communication and developing trust and solid personal relations between people of all countries and their leaders. Gorbachev and Reagan came to an agreement that led to reduction of both nuclear arsenals in the past. We need to find ways to identify mutual interests in preventing nuclear conflict.

History shows that existence of nuclear weapons has done nothing to prevent many terrible conflicts since 1945 including acts of aggression against countries with nuclear weapons. Part of the role of local politicians is to take actions that promote the safety of constituents. Since this is an issue that includes the terrifying possibility of Earth's extinction, anything our local officials do to influence the national authorities to pay attention to it and act on our behalf contribute significantly to our confidence in them and our sense of safety. Safety indeed is a local issue. Thank you.

Thank you. Joan Gumbleton, you are allowed to speak.

Thank you. I'm Gumbleton and I live on Falmouth Road. We are one of the smallest cities in one of the smallest states. and our voting on this issue seems to be immaterial in the scheme of the whole United States. I believe in peace through strength and are limiting our options puts us more at risk with a world that wants to destroy us. There is a lot of money wasted in various levels of government in fraud and uncontrolled spending. and I feel this is a necessary item to maintain. We know Russia and China are not our friends and if they feel that they have an upper hand, we lose our negotiating powers. We can't control or believe these countries will abide by agreements to control their expansion of nuclear weapons. Look what Iran keeps trying to do. There are many evil leaders in this world, and they don't want peace.

We must protect ourselves. Watertown seems to want to be first in so many areas. whether it's net zero, all electric vehicles, and putting all of our eggs in one basket on relying on all of our electric power for all aspects of our life. And I personally feel this is the same for your weapon issues. We need to have all options available to us in emergency situations. Let's concentrate on local issues we can actually have some effect on and use our vote in national elections. for the people you feel represent your particular views, whether pro or con. I think we just need to stick to local issues. We're just getting way beyond our seas on this type of thing. and in the long run we're putting ourselves at risk.

Thank you very much.

I'm Dan Grossman, I live on Hawthorne Street in Watertown. I think that most of us haven't thought very much about nuclear weapons for a long time, but those of you who are old enough remember the Reagan administration when people were terrified of nuclear weapons and there was a broad movement which called the Freeze Campaign. and because of the success of that campaign, or in part due to the success of that campaign, there were nuclear weapons agreements that were made. Someone has alluded to those agreements. And the temperature was brought down a bit, and we haven't had to think about it for 30 or 40 years. as everybody who reads the paper knows. The sabers are being rattled.

Nuclear weapons systems are being discussed again. A lot of money is being... allocated to them, and we have to think again about that threat. We have to worry again about that threat because the threat is growing. and one thing I know about the freeze movement from my own experience is the importance of local communities playing a role. I actually was in college during the Reagan administration, and I was moved to make a documentary about activists during the freeze campaign and one of the things that went on back then was town meetings all around New England had made the decision to issue proclamations along the lines of what you're considering today.

Those town meetings in small towns in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, like Watertown, had no particular connection to nuclear weapons, but they raised consciousness. And I think that the same thing could happen here in Watertown. Thank you.

Anyone else here or at home wish to speak? Anyone want a second minute? Please.

Bruce Colton, Marion Road. So I wrote out a speech, but I'm going to junk it for this. I want to say that I agree with almost everything that has been said in this room, except for one thing. When people try to tie this into a local issue, it's tortured logic. I've read the rationale. and we can take any number of issues and apply that template and do the exact same thing. If there's an irony that I see right now, it is that more than any time that I can remember, institutions that we have come to depend on have been eroded, have been compromised. And in many cases, we can no longer depend on them. They've lost credibility and they've lost trust. and here we have something that we can do with this institution to control it.

We have a well, Operating Council. And we can do all kinds of things with it within the boundaries of this council. If we start to play with it, beginning here, we can find all kinds of issues that can fill this room with people who are just as passionate and we can turn this council into a resolution factory. And I don't think that's what we should be doing. I think we've really got to give some thought to how we go about doing this. I hope everybody here who is making this issue significant does everything they can possibly do and certainly involve the community but not this particular body. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

Is there anyone else that wishes to be heard? Yes.

Jackie Gross, Belmont Street. I understand what I'm hearing, and I know that all of you agree with us in terms of nuclear disarmament, that it should be going down. and I know that if you were in my position, I'm not on the council, I'm not a city council member. but I would be here doing this. This is really important. I want you to hear us. Please hear us. This is a very important issue. I don't know what else to say that this is something that we need to take action on. And if we don't do it, who will? I want to do it for my kids. You know, it's fine. You guys can make your decisions. You have your own conscience that you have to live with. And I support whatever decisions you make.

But I just want you to know This is what I feel. This is what a lot of us feel. 50 people, 500 people that signed those petitions and others agree with us. So I just want to say that in two emotions.

Thank you, yes.

So Joseph Gerson again. I want to make two points. First is that last month, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of their doomsday clock to 85 seconds to midnight, 85 seconds to annihilation because of the growing threats principally of nuclear weapons. This is the closest it's been since the Hiroshima A bomb to understand quite how dangerous this moment is. The second thing is that when I worked for the American Friends Service Committee back in, I think it was 1979, we had agreed to support the freeze movement, but nobody quite knew how to do that. and one of my colleagues named Dave McCauley said, you know, this spring we're gonna have 15 towns in Vermont vote for a nuclear weapons freeze at town meeting and next year we'll have 175. and we all thought, David, that's a great way to try to save your job, but no way.

That spring, 17 towns in Vermont voted for the freeze that was followed by an op-ed in the New York Times and the following spring, 330 towns and eight states across the country voted for a nuclear weapons freeze. And that was the popular movement that drove ultimately Reagan and Gorbachev to come to their agreement. So I want you to understand your responsibility, to understand you're working in the context of history, and to remember the earlier testimony about the number of towns and cities in this state who've already endorsed this resolution. Thank you. Thank you.

Is there anyone else either here or at home? Yes. Yes.

Elodia Thomas, 67, Marion Road. I am not undermining or underestimating all the work and the passion that this group has. but when I came back to this country from the Netherlands, I think it was 58 or 59, I came to a new school and I had to hide under a desk because we thought bombs were going to be going off. I think you have a nugget of something here that is quite important. But 500 signatures do not represent 35,000 people in the town. I believe that you should gather with these other 20 communities and go for full court press and reach out to everybody and systematically knock this down. You could have, I think, 30,000 signatures in this community. because nobody wants nuclear warfare or nuclear proliferation. But I do not think right now this is the mission of our city council given all they have on their plate. And I think we keep having these proclamations and these

issues keep coming up and it has nothing to do with the government of Watertown and the people that I talk to have many more serious issues and if the bomb goes off it's just what happens. We are living in a crazy world with a lunatic in charge of our government, I'm just going to say it, and we are all nervous, and I get it. I really get it, but let's be very thoughtful. Go out and get more signatures, go to these other communities, get a key group together and let's spread this out. I've been involved with many petitions both national and local and I know what it takes to get signatures and I know what it takes to stay in communication with the people who have signed a petition. It's not a one and done deal, believe me. I've worked on some things for 11 years. So I really appreciate your work, but please do not shove this down our council's throat with everything they have on their plate. Thank you.

Anyone else wish to be heard? Yes.

Todd Gross' son, Belmont Street. Just want to say briefly, I appreciate all the arguments that people have given, and I have respect for all of them. The thing that really struck me by being involved in this that I'd like you to know before you vote is that this has given a lot of people hope. and Hope is a very important commodity right now when a lot of things around us, a lot of people are angry, they're upset, they're nervous. I see it as a psychologist too in my practice. And so I think one thing is that this work is, providing some hope. The second thing it's providing whether we lose or not tonight is education. People are learning. We've had webinars. People are starting to think about this issue again because it is so threatening. And the third thing lastly is that I've watched some young people and their response to what we're doing. And we've had some young people involved. And they need to know that there is hope and that their working on things can make a difference.

So I hope that that will be something that you consider also as you think about this. But no matter what happens, I'm glad that we did this, proud of the committee, and thankful to you all that you listened to what we had to say. We appreciate that a lot.

Thank you. Is there anyone else here or at home? Yes.

Thank you for hearing us tonight. Sue Ellen Hirschman, Russell Ave. I think about what the arsenal is. And I know, as I think Stephanie had mentioned, we have this personal history in Watertown with the damage of nuclear weapons manufacturing that happened in our town. and as all you know Watertown Citizens spent over a decade working so hard to get the government to restore that land in a way that we could build whatever we wanted to build and not be stuck with particular buildings and have a park. So I feel like for us in Watertown, it has particular resonance about our personal historic experience with nuclear weapon manufacturing in Watertown. and the extreme, just absurd, obscene numbers of dollars, the trillions being spent on it, is our taxpayers' money. And I do feel that we have a special obligation in Watertown

to take a stand and to join the many other communities. And we are all working around the country, not just in Watertown, but here's our city. and here's where it matters most to us. So I really hope that as others have said that the council will take courage and take a stand and join these other communities and the more and more communities that we gather to take a stand that will have an impact in spite of people's skepticism. Thank you.

Thank you. Last call? If anyone else hasn't spoken? Okay, you get one more minute each. Come on up.

I just want to say on a positive note, we got those amount of signatures. Thank you. perhaps some people don't think of this issue. Sometimes, not everyone, not to generalize, they're dealing with their presently facing. So I want to praise this group for getting those amount of signatures. They worked hard on it.

Thank you.

This is Lillian again from Hall Ave. This is my first time doing something like this. I'm really nervous, which is why I was debating if I should come back up again. But all of my friends here have inspired me. I just want to say that... I moved to Watertown about four or five years ago and I know a lot of people made points about how busy everyone is here and how you know we shouldn't endorse all of these resolutions and I don't know the ins and outs of what all of you do so I appreciate those comments and at the same time I just want to say that when I moved to Watertown As a young person who really desires peace, I was so encouraged to find these amazing people here who are all working on these different issues like nuclear and like climate change and it made me really proud to be a Watertown citizen and I without you know, ever having participated in this kind of gathering, I felt like, wow, Watertown is a place where people who are really fighting for justice lives.

Like, I really felt that way. I don't want to move from Watertown for that reason I'm currently looking to move but I want to stay in Watertown because of what it's come to stand for me and so again I echo what everyone else shared about respecting the decision of this body but I think that to me what this city stands for is what has really encouraged me since moving here. So I just wanted to add that to what I shared earlier. Thank you.

Thank you. I now close the public hearing. First of all, I want to thank everyone for coming tonight on a snowy evening. It wasn't snowing when I came. I don't know what it's like out there now, but thank you for coming out, and thank you to the people at home, and thank you to the groups that have gathered the signatures to put this in front of us. I do agree with a speaker that said that I don't think there's anyone on this council that doesn't support Nuclear Disarmament. So again, appreciate everything that was done. The education that you've been providing to people around the community I think is important. The education that you've provided is also important, so thank you for all of that. I now would ask for a motion from the City Council as to how we're going to proceed. Palomba.

Thank you, Council President. I'd like to make a motion that the resolution be put in front of us for a vote.

Is there a second? Second. Discussion? Councilor Palomba.

Thank you very much. I'll try to keep this short, Council President Sideris, because I know some of the things have been said. I do want to take a moment to thank the Nuclear Disarmament Committee of Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice, and Environment for bringing this resolution to the city council via the citizen petition option, as you said. delineated in our charter. I'm honored to have worked with them for nearly two years as they have collected the signatures, held numerous public forums, one just recently, appeared on WCA TV, wrote and distributed brochures and handouts, arranged for presentations on this issue with Watertown students. sent a letter of materials to each of the counselors along with the book by Annie Jacobson's Nuclear War, A Scenario.

continued to reach out and met with just about every one of you, which is wonderful you took the time to meet with them. They are a remarkable and dedicated folks committed to keeping the residents of Watertown safe from the devastating effects of a nuclear exchange or an all-out nuclear war. Thank you. There are a number of things that were said, so I'm going to try to quickly go through and focus on the things that I want to say as a counselor. We know that this is an existential threat. We said that. We know that it is a critical time to do this. As we said, negotiations have just ended for the final agreement between Russia and the United States. We've heard that the scientists and others at the Ableton of Atomic Scientists have moved the clock of the doomsday clock the second hand closer.

I've heard some city councilors that we should not entertain this resolution because nuclear disarmament writ large is not a local issue. While I have heard arguments from proponents tonight, while they believe it is a local issue, I just want to share some of my own feelings. I believe that in addition to providing needed local services to residents and using tax dollars prudently, it is one of my responsibilities is to protect residents of Watertown. When I vote for police and fire budgets, I'm voting to protect Watertown residents. When I support the work of our health department, its trainings, alerts, vaccine programs, and more, I'm voting to protect Watertown citizens.

When I support the City's Biosafety Committee and its efforts to regulate and monitor life science research, I'm protecting Watertown citizens. When I vote tonight in favor of this resolution, I'm voting to protect residents of Watertown. One example of an elected body taking action to protect Watertown residents was the resolution recently passed by the Watertown School Committee. which states that our schools will protect immigrant students and families in wake of the actions by immigration and custom enforcements. Clearly the school committee decided that the enforcement of a federal mandate, whether you agree with it or not, a federal mandate is a local issue. Finally, I want to discuss earlier the issue of money.

Let me just simply say that I've looked at the research, and it seems like $87 billion is necessary this fiscal year to maintain our existing nuclear weapons and to continue to modernize future weapons. That is, as people said, money that could be used for housing, health care, and environmental protection. But I want to talk about how federal funds reach cities and towns. How federal funds reach cities and towns is both direct and indirect, but the common denominator is that funding affects our residents. sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. Our schools receive direct federal support. The reconstruction of Mount Auburn Street is being paid by the federal government. While federal funds for cities and towns may be administered by state agencies, the origin of the funds is the federal government.

Indirect examples of our residents and our annual budgets are affected by federal funding are also relevant. Based on the 2024 figures, 10% of the families in Watertown of individuals and families are recipients of SNAP. SNAP is directly funded by the federal government. Cuts in funding can directly affect certain industries. such as the life science industry. Cuts in grants for life sciences impact whether investment in buildings and startups are made. Those decisions affect local budgets, particularly in the communities like Watertown. What we call new growth decreases and a decline in available tax revenues results in less money

which results in less money for improvements and new programs. Another example, federal government increases in funding for affordable housing through increases in available tax credits lessens the burden on cities and towns to fund affordable housing for their residents. Let me conclude by mentioning that U.S. Representative McGovern from Worcester has again introduced a back from the brink nuclear disarmament resolution in Congress. That resolution is supported by his colleagues, Representative Lynch, Pressley, and Neal. Often, Representative McGovern emphasizes the critical role which local and state legislation

that supports nuclear disarmament plays in influencing his colleagues in Congress to support, co-sponsor his initiative. I can't say this with certainty, but the decision by Representative Clark, second in leadership in the Democratic caucus, to support Senator Markey's companion legislation in the Senate was in due in part to local grassroots efforts. I ask my colleagues to support this resolution. so that Watertown will join the other 200 Massachusetts in cities and towns, which vary in size and forms of government. You've heard that list already. And I asked them to support to join the over 70 legislators, local and state,

throughout the U.S. in passing similar resolutions. Let Watertown be part of the national movement for nuclear disarmament. Thank you, Council President Sideris.

Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Seeing none, well, did you want to say, Councilor Bates?

Yeah, so I've actually really struggled with this one a lot. I think I was one of the people who said we don't usually address local issues. Obviously, if there's a nuclear war, in Watertown, it's a local issue. But what we meant, what I meant by we don't, we usually stick to local issues, is we stick to things that we can control. We stick to things that are in our purview. I was not going to second this. I would not have seconded this. I'm really struggling with my vote on this. I'm really struggling with my vote on this. My first job out of college was for SANE, for a SANE nuclear policy. That's what I worked for, was working on nuclear issues and trying to and the threat of nuclear war.

We can do this. It's not gonna be a huge thing for the town. It's not gonna be I don't even think it's going to be significant in terms of the people who receive it. But, I mean, I work for SANE. This was my first International, national issue. And I really want to support this. There are consequences to starting to do all these resolutions. and I don't want to see Watertown, I actually agree I don't want to see Watertown passing a lot of resolutions that we really don't have any control over. that we have no law, we do not have a law.

We have no, there's nothing in our purview that we have control over nuclear weapons. So I understand what you're requesting us to do is to send this on to our federal legislators who do have more control than we do. I'm just not sure how effective this is as something to do. Having said that, I'm still struggling and I probably won't know until it comes out of my mouth how I'm going to vote on this. I'm still struggling with it but I just want to say that like when we talk about local issues we're talking about things that are within our purview that we have a right to do things about. Thanks.

Any other comments? Councilor Gannon.

Thank you, Mr. President. So I too weighed my thoughts on this. But I think I come down to an issue of conscience. And I'll step back regarding the local issue. you know, local issues, you know, become national issues or international issues or have some influence. So I think of Watertown's adopting of a, I mean, Watertown was at the forefront of adopting a biosafety type of legislation for long before the life science movement came to Watertown. And folks who pushed for that, as I recall, didn't want dangerous conditions of our life science labs and legislation was involved. We now have a biosafety committee.

The impact of what didn't seem like a local issue during that discussion, I subsequently learned that life science companies they look for regulations like that. They don't want to come into a community where there is no regulation because it could prompt a movement against the entire industry in that location. That was an example of something that didn't seem like a local issue because there wasn't a lot of life science at the time, but it became a very valuable I've spoken with life science developers, they want to see some kind of regulation because they know the industry is welcome. So we've seen it in Watertown. We're paying for brand new schools without asking for debt exclusion from our voters.

Also, we've had the example within the last week of Eli Lilly purchasing a Watertown-grown life science business for $2.7 billion. That's a B. Those are the issues I think about when thinking of larger issues in the context of a local issue and certainly Watertown had its nuclear reactor and in fact not just knowing about it, I had a very small role in reviewing the documents that Kaiser Engineering in their safety plan when they went in to remove it, Watertown Fire Department employees had to be trained how to respond to a crisis during the Kaiser Engineering's removal of that nuclear reactor. And it floored me. And the impacts of what had to be done to dismantle that reactor. and I also grew up as a history major.

I remember reading about allusions to physicists who talked about the sacredness of never utilizing nuclear technology again. And then that didn't really last long. Back the day I was born, the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was saber rattling over Cuba about which country would deploy nuclear weapons first, the United States or Russia. We've gone to a world where, you know, phew, we dodged a bullet there, then hearing testimony that there were a lot of mistakes were made that were even more problematic. I think beyond that what's pushing it for me is the now casual use or reference of first use nuclear weapons. We're hearing that from the leader of Russia. We're hearing it from the leader of our own country.

that casual threat scares the crap out of me and that's something I feel I have to do as my own conscious Can we, Watertown, bring down the forces of the nuclear armament movement worldwide? Maybe we kind of influenced, but I feel as one voter, one vote counselor on this petition, that I can make a difference. I can say I did something. don't like to feel like a victim, waiting for the world to happen, waiting for this thing or that thing to happen. I like to take action. I feel better. I feel stronger. I feel Watertown is stronger by taking a position. So, like I said, I speak as one councilor in a larger issue.

Some folks might call it symbolic, but it's something we have in our control to stand up to a situation that's getting like untenable. You've got casual mentions of the use of nuclear arms. I think we can do something through this petition by informing our we can't negotiate directly is our one little town, but we can notify our Congresswoman who's during, if if the Democrats take over Congress, she will be the number two person in Congress. So that's a strong message we're sending through this resolution. We have two senators who are very much active in worldwide issues, and I think we're sending them a message as well.

But I do think back to the evolution of nuclear threats as very casual. I also was going to speak about the funding issues. We're seeing funding diminished for human needs in this country. My son is a special needs student. folks in his situation at younger ages are losing federal funding that used to be there that helped my son and instead these dollars are going to boost up a military budget for what purpose? I mean, I think we as a Watertown body We have a voice.

We can notify our senator and our congressman who, knock on wood, will become the number two person in the Congress that we stand, that we pledge our voices to at least provide a voice that we think something can be done in a better way. Thank you.

Vice President Piccirilli.

Thank you, Mr. President. Since I was first elected 18 years ago, I've maintained a position to not vote for symbolic legislation that is outside the jurisdiction of the Watertown City Council. I fully support the concept of nuclear disarmament. And as I told the members of the group that I met with a few weeks ago, I would happily sign a letter or petition to our members of Congress. What I don't support is this council issuing a resolution on policy on matters of foreign affairs or national defense which are not under the jurisdiction of this council. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you. Are there any other comments? Councilor Pei.

I also struggled a lot with this resolution, but As I thought more about it, I was reminded by a quote by President Obama that's when one voice can change a room, and if it can change a room, it can change a city. And if you can change a city, you can change a state. And if you can change a state, you can change a nation. And if you can change a nation, you can change the world. So thank you to the Watertown citizens for peace and justice for bringing this resolution forward tonight. Your advocacy and commitment embody the democratic ideal that change often comes from ordinary citizens refusing to accept the world as it is. It takes courage to demand that your elected officials take a stand on issues that matter. Nuclear disarmament is a rare issue that calls us beyond politics.

The existence of civilization and in weapons is a moral question about the very existence of future generations. I support this resolution because I believe that we can be big enough to imagine a world without the threat of nuclear annihilation. I think that every voice raised for peace, resolution passed and letter sent to Congress adds weight to the side of sanity. but I also want to be honest about something that's been weighing on me. I run for city council on a platform called Progress with Purpose. promising to focus on those issues where this council has direct power to meaningfully change the lives of Watertown residents. I see that as my fundamental job here. As a council, we have many demands on our limited bandwidth and I want our efforts to be as impactful as possible. I've seen what happens when government bodies lose focus.

I lived in the Bay Area through a time when local government became a stage for symbolic politics and didn't get much done for constituents. but after a lot of thought, I've decided that there are moments when symbolism does matter. when the moral weight of an issue is just too great. Robert Kennedy said, each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot, the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. I see this resolution as one of those ripples. I'm supporting this tonight because I think it's the right thing to do for the future of our community. But I'm also telling you clearly, this is exceptional. I don't believe the city council should routinely weigh in on issues we have no control over.

not because those issues don't matter, they matter enormously, but because our unique responsibility is to govern Watertown well and doing that requires focus. the work of engaged citizens and dedicated advocacy organizations is critical to making change. Our federal representatives who have the actual power to shape these policies need to hear from you. on this issue, I think it is appropriate for the council to also formally support that work. And while I'm urging caution about council scope, to ensure we stay focused. I'm grateful that we have citizens in Watertown who are out there pushing boundaries and insisting that we think bigger. And finally, I want to say I know that this resolution actually doesn't do anything to solve nuclear disarmament.

If you read the resolution, it says, therefore be it resolved that a city of Watertown calls on the United States to lead a global effort to prevent nuclear war. Our residents are just asking us to call on our country to lead a global effort. I think that's something we can do. Thank you.

Are there any other comments? I just want to close by again thanking everyone for bringing this resolution forward. And as I stated earlier, I don't think there's anyone sitting at this table that does not agree that we should be continuing the fight for nuclear disarmament. I'm going to follow up on Vice President Piccirilli's comments. I'm concerned that we would be, by supporting this petition that was setting a precedent that we're going to take up everything at this city council. and I firmly believe as Councilor Offei just stated that we want to, we deal with a lot of things that directly affect the city of Watertown and I'm gonna give two examples. One example was Recently, we had the same type of citizen petition about a winter parking ban and the people were down the stairs and outside.

and we listened and took some action that we could take here in Watertown and it's a good thing we didn't, we still have a parking ban because we have a lot of snow. But we gave some relief to the residents. Something else that's gonna come up very shortly is a demonstration project in Watertown Square. We're gonna have nights in this room that this room is going to be packed and we're gonna directly affect the lives of those people in this room, in the city, in Watertown Square. these are issues that I think are very critical that we should be working on. And again, it's not that I don't agree with what's in front of us this evening. I disagree with the fact that we should be serving our community directly, and again, I respectfully appreciate all the opinions of my colleagues, but I do think that we have very important work to do, and I'm afraid that I don't

agree that we should be opening the door to having a resolution on everything that we have no control over. Our job is here in this community and we can directly affect most of the 35,000 people with the things that we do within the confines of the city of Watertown. So I have a motion and a second. Can I get a roll call, please?

Councilor Offei. Yes. Councilor Palomba. Yes. Councilor Piccirilli. No. Councilor Bays.

Yes.

Feltner?

No.

Councilor Gannon? Yes. Councilor Gardner?

No.

Councilor Izzo?

No.

President Sideris? No. 5-4, no.

Motion defeated. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is motions, orders, and resolutions. And 7A is a resolution approving the expenditure of a gift of funds to the Recreation Department. Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Mr. President. As you are aware, National General Law Chapter 44, Section 53A requires the City Council to accept gifts of funds. to help defray costs with the first community family paddle and canoe race. The Watertown Savings Bank has generally contributed $1,000 towards the event scheduled to take place on Saturday, May 9th along the Charles River Dock area and Braille Trail. Monies will be used to assist with permitting costs. And I want to take a moment to thank the Watertown Savings Bank and appreciate the council's support to accept these funds for expenditure. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you. Can I get a motion to approve the expenditure of the gift of funds to the Recreation Department? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. 7B is a consideration and approval of exemptions of interest of existing city employees in contracts with the city, including summer, winter, holiday, and after-school program employment positions in response to disclosures filed with the city clerk by prospective employees and certification by the department, by the recreation director that no employee of that department is available to perform those services as part of their regular duties. Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Mr. President. We have just one of these today. Under General Law 268A, Section 20B, Tyler Gardner is seeking a position as athletic trainer who already has a position, I believe, in the school department. and wants to work with the Recreation Department. As you know, having this second position, often this happens with our recreation, our summer and our special programs. So I would appreciate your support for this item. Thank you, Mr. President.

can I get a motion to approve the exemptions of interests? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Roll call please.

I'm sorry.

All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Sorry. A lot going on. Communications from the city manager. An 8A is a request. for confirmation of appointment to the memorialization committee. Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Mr. President. Just one request for appointment. Dimitri Petrosian is a member of the memorialization committee as we're setting this up, this committee up, I appreciate the referral. Once again, as usual, this was a recommendation coming through the Residence Advisory Committee. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you. That goes to the Committee on Public Works. 8B is a request for a referral of the proposed Pet Shop Ordinance.

Thank you, Mr. President. This Council asks the administration to work to write an ordinance to restrict the selling of dogs, cats, and rabbits, puppies, kittens, and rabbits, ensuring that they are free from abuse by limiting the circumstances under which they can be sold in the city of Watertown. we look forward to discussing this ordinance further with the committee referral. Thank you, Mr. President.

Point of information, Mr. President. One second.

First, can I get a motion to refer this to Rules and Ordinance first?

So moved.

Is there a second? Councilor Feltner.

When did city council request this policy guidance? Because my understanding with my conversation with the manager and the planning department was that this is already prevented from happening. based on our current zoning. And I'm wondering, are there businesses that are looking to open in Watertown or what is the impetus behind this new ordinance?

Well, I... this was requested by a city councilor and the Rules and Ordinance Committee referred it back to the manager for a to bring forward a proposed ordinance. It is part of a zone. We do have this in zoning, but they wanted to tighten it up a little bit. So that's why this is in front of us.

So just to quickly clarify, what we have in zoning is we have a provision that doesn't allow the storage of, I believe it is dogs and cats, overnight. essentially limits the ability for somebody to operate a typical pet store. We looked at the possibility of keeping something more clearly in zoning specifically outlawing pet stores as a particular item. And then we got into discussing whether or not one wanted to actually limit the sale of goldfish or other such things beyond dogs, cats, and rabbits. We looked at the types of ordinances that have been done in other locations and what I'll share here is just that what this does not only prohibits the ability to overnight board and and Sell, which already isn't allowed, but also it limits the ability for someone to kind of show up at a community event and sell these or sell these in a one day circumstance. so it's a lot more restrictive.

This is not in response to any particular request that we have seen in Watertown to actually do this.

Thank you. Thank you. Just to clarify, though, that there wasn't a city council request. This was never referred to rules and ordinances. Rules and ordinances did not request this for policy guidance. So just, you know, to correct the record.

That was referred under President's report. I apologize. Gannon. Yeah, that's what I want to say. It never came before. No, it was referred under, I did that under President's report. Okay.

Thank you.

So we have a motion and a second to refer this to the Rules and Ordinance Committee. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. 8C is a submission of the administrative code. Mr. Manager.

Thank you Mr. President. The Administration Code has been discussed once and we have collected a lot of information from the from the council, and I appreciate the council's support and feedback on the administration code in general. At this point, what I have before you is a request for referral for committee to go over this one more One more time and review the final version that we believe is the correct submitted version for passage by the city council as it incorporates much feedback that we received from the council meeting. Take a look. This is redlined from the previous version behind the additional documents so you can also see the changes made. So I'm requesting a referral. and as we wrote this item very specifically, there's two elements to this item. One is an administrative code that is

to be reviewed by the council under Article 6, Section 6 of the Home Rule Charter, which specifies a council up or down vote in a specific timeline related to it. So I'd like to make the council aware of that. The second piece of this is in order for this to work right, it requires the repeal of sections of a number of chapters of the city code to ensure we don't duplicate, have duplicate regulations. I know at least one community passed an administrative code like this, left their other regulations in place. And when you do that, you end up then having to amend two things to amend the code. And they end up duplicative. They end up confusing. The goal here is simplification, not confusion. So it's important to look at those two pieces together. So as far as the administrative code requires council action, but the other items require the typical public hearing to do ordinance amendments. and the two really have to work and stay together in order for it to make sense. So I look forward to discussing this further with committee.

This has taken a long way to get here for those who may be listening who have not been in the middle of the conversation about the administrative code the purpose of this the number one significant purpose of this is to simplify the understanding of how city administration and city boards and commissions work by having all of that information in one area of code that sits just below the city charter and lays out those pieces all in one place rather than having it scattered through about 10 different sections of the Code of Ordinances right now as it currently is. The actual substantive changes here, there are some, they are not they're not hugely significant, although they do change some ways we do operations of things. For instance, like we said, we changed the divisions in DPW. changed some provisions on how the boards work. We changed some two-year appointments to three-year appointments. We added council. confirmation to the boards that don't have council confirmation right now.

So there's a number of those steps in here, but I think we've got a great document here, and I look forward to discussing it with the Council in the format that Council President and the Council sees fit. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you. This is going to go to the Committee of the Whole so that we can have a very broad discussion because We could have sent it to personnel and city organization, but I think it's important enough that we take this up all together. So we'll be scheduling a meeting. Maybe it's part of a city council meeting, but it's going to the committee of the whole. Mr. Manager, continue.

Thank you, Mr. President. I just want to share a few small announcements and then two larger perspectives on things. First of all, You're probably aware that Steve Magoon, our Assistant City Manager for Community Development and Planning, has now retired. I've asked Mr. Magoon starting next week to and he has graciously accepted to be available to us two days a week to assist with the management of the department until his successor is named. and so I'm working closely with him to make sure that he's available and I think even after his successor is named I want to maintain having some level of work available from him and he has offered again to do that in the early part of his retirement so that we can make sure that this transition works well. just so you know his email still works. He is not working a full-time schedule but to council and community needs he can be responsive. I wish him well in his retirement and hopefully some relaxation.

I know he's in a bit of a medical recovery right now as well, but he's doing well. And I also will note that we definitely will have him back here to acknowledge all the good work he's done for us. But I do think that he'll be around still. So I just wanted to... make you aware of that. The other piece, just one second here. I wanted to share, if you had not heard this yet, I think we emailed the Council about this, Jamie O'Connell, who had been on the Conservation Commission and had been up for reappointment, gave me a resignation letter this week. I want to acknowledge all of her great work and all of the tireless work that she put in as a member of the Conservation Commission. But I wanted to note that while I had submitted her name for reappointment,

She's now resigned, so we will submit another name for that particular seat. I also spoke to the chair of the Conservation Commission today, He's got a tough job here with Jamie's resignation. Maria Rose is not continuing and I've put in a name to replace her. but that also means that the Conservation Commission is going to have to give us a new appointee to be on the Community Preservation Committee. We're going to work with the Conservation Commission to make all those things happen and again with With thanks to Jamie for all of her work, we are looking to make sure we can fill that void the best way we possibly can. The Civics Academy, a free seven-week program running Thursdays 6 to 8 p.m. from April 30th to June 11th, 2026 this year. This is the second year we're running the Civics Academy. people interested in learning how local government work through interactive sessions with city staff. We're looking particularly for folks who don't have a lot of introduction to local government. Applications are open through March 8th, 2026 on the city's website.

Open to Watertown residents. are all priority for those who haven't yet served on city boards and commissions. Last time we had to make some tough choices because we had more applicants than slots. People can feel free to reapply as well. And I really appreciate the the circumstances, the folks that have been willing to participate and we already put a number of people on the city boards who participated in the civics academy last year and they've been great additions and volunteers in our community. City Hall, Parker Building, Library, DPW, Senior Center are all closed this Monday, February 16th in observation of President's Day. Finally, I want to spend a minute on two topics that are just going to take a bit longer, so I hope folks will just bear with me as I share this. I want to share with the council tonight some thoughts on what I'll refer to as snow and ice.

That's snow, the white fluffy stuff that's falling from the sky, and ice, the federal agency that's recently been in the news for their activities in Minnesota and Maine. So I want to start with snow. I wanted to provide a bit of a closeout report on the storm that hit Watertown on January 25th and 26th and just share some information about what it takes to remove 20 inches of snow at a rate of two inches an hour at a peak time of a storm. It's been a few years since we've had a storm of this magnitude. We called for a snow emergency to begin at noon on Sunday, January 25th. Our DPW salting operations began at 11 a.m. on Sunday before the storm began. This was a cold storm, so salt trucks were dropping their plows by 1 p.m., and contractors had arrived to begin their routes between 2 and 3 p.m. that day. We've broken our plow routes into 21 separate areas of the city with dedicated plows deployed to each area.

We start with main roadways, arterial roads, and emergency evacuation routes, followed by throughways and side roads. This operation continued Sunday into Monday. Monday afternoon and evening contractors worked through all the roadways on the route pushing snow back along corridors and curbs and sidewalk contractors were called in Monday evening to address parking lots, bus stops and crosswalks and continued their work overnight. On Tuesday, we ended the snow emergency at 6 o'clock. As you may recall, we also kept schools closed on Tuesday. The snow operations on Monday were busy enough on focusing on the streets that a lot of those school routes weren't ready. Contractors removed snow from the school lots and drop off sites on Tuesday morning after the cars from the snow emergency were moved back onto the street and DPW continued with with snow clearance at schools, sidewalks, and crosswalks until their shift ended on Tuesday. City Hall was able to reopen Tuesday. We were able to reopen the School Buildings on Wednesday.

Tuesday and Friday, the parking ban became very important to us Tuesday to Friday night. The DPW team moved into the next phase of the cleanup process. a lot of evening work, widening main roads, clearing bus stops, clearing crosswalks, and doing snow removal to the citywide Manly Way snow dump that we were able to use. This is what most folks would call Walker Pond. the Conservation Commission for an area of that that we can drop snow right now until that park project is done. We also continue to work with resident concerns. DPW staff continues no removal operations also during the day based upon community reports via 311. To grasp the scope of work that their DPW team has to do, here's some quick facts. We have 72 miles of roadway to clear. 20 miles of sidewalk, 846 tons of salt were used on our roadways, and approximately 30,000 cubic yards of snow were moved to the holding yard.

If you started burying football fields in one foot of snow, that's the equivalent of about 11 football fields at a foot deep of snow that were moved to those areas. Sunday the 25th and Saturday the 31st, DPW staff totaled 1,454 hours of time responding and clearing snow from the storm. Our contractors dedicated 1,992 hours in the first week of the storm response and cleanup. We deployed a total of 43 vehicles on the roads throughout the storm. and just to be clear, that's what the number of contractors we have available and were able to get. One of our larger contractors that we had been using was not available. to us this year. We are still open to having more snow contractors. It certainly helps us get further along in this process, but we are certainly using a lot at this point. During the declared snow emergency, our police department worked to clear the roads of cars not removed from the street. They issued 69 tickets for violating the snow emergency parking van.

Those were at the new higher $100 rate. for snow emergency tickets. We towed 27 vehicles. There were a lot of other circumstances where we pulled a tow truck up behind a vehicle. and soon after doing that, found that the owner mysteriously appeared from their front door, rushed out and moved to their car. So moving tow trucks around sometimes doesn't make as much money for tow companies, but just having them there helps get those vehicles off the streets. We had four officers working overtime to help enforce the ban, totaling about 25 and a half hours. and our DPW team also hired officers on details to help with the moving of vehicles during additional 20 hours of time. So we did a lot of work to try to get vehicles moved and assessed under those circumstances. The residential shoveling ordinance is being enforced for the first time this year. This is the first time we've had a significant storm under this circumstance. This is a learning process for us.

So what we ask people to do with any of the complaints, the snow complaints, the plowing complaints, Sidewalk Complaints is to reach out to 311 either through our C-Click Fix system or a call to 311. And we are refining that process as we go. But our 311 team received 364 unique addresses reported for both residential and commercial snow and ice ordinance removal. To date, they've issued 50 warnings or fines this season, and I know they're going back and doing a second pass through every place that had a warning issued. and if they haven't still cleaned it since we gave them the warning, we have a position where we can give them the fine. We have a small code enforcement team, as you know. Limited number of hours they have to do this and they're also doing a whole bunch of other things. Right now I will share the team has not been issuing violations to properties that they deem to be making a reasonable effort at clearing snow. There's two challenges with this storm. One is we have that rule of the width you can clear.

If you tried to clear it, you can't quite get there. We're not going to issue a ticket in that circumstance right now. We're monitoring it. The other thing is in areas where we have sidewalks right up against streets, and we have this push and pull between people who say why you know you should plow closer to the curb and then folks just say you should shovel the sidewalk and sometimes you plow so close to the curb you put a six foot snowbank on top of the sidewalk and I can't necessarily tell someone to clean a six foot snow bank that our plow put there, just quite the way I can tell them to clear the 20 inches of snow that naturally fell on their sidewalk. So there's some back and forth and some learning that we're doing on all of this. This has been a challenging storm from a number of perspectives. In the time leading up to, during, and following the storm, the City's communication team has worked to inform the community and keep residents updated throughout. This includes four community-wide Everbridge messages that were delivered to 16,000 contacts each, snow emergency and building closure messages that were reviewed over 73,000 times on social media,

The Watertown website snow page is the most visited web page between our first notice of the snow emergency on the 23rd of January, ended ending on the 27th with nearly 6,000 page views. and the immediate week following the storm, our 311 team has received and processed 264 calls related to snow. I want to assure everybody that if we receive a complaint about snow plowing, and it comes through our 311 process, it gets processed, it gets placed onto a spreadsheet, it gets reviewed by our DPW, they look at it, they assess it, in circumstances where they can add it to the list of something to do, they work on and they do it. I've heard a lot of feedback. It has been challenging in this storm to plow to the curb on some of the side streets, which has left some of the side streets narrow and some challenges in place. There are two things I want to share related to this in terms of our follow-up. One is that as we are working on the sidewalk ordinance and the and the dispatching of our code enforcement team to address it.

It is a lot of work for them and we're trying to figure out how we might adjust and consider that going forward to be more active on it. We are working complaints based on the sidewalk ordinance. We are not walking around looking for sidewalk problems. If people see them and they report them to 311, we send a person out and we either issue them a warning or if appropriate, issue them a ticket. or if we determine that it's not a circumstance where we can do that at this time, we do at least go out there and look at it. From the perspective of the roadway work, they look at what they can do. We've been prioritizing main streets, bus stops, routes to schools. and with a limited contractor pool and the circumstances we're working and the hours we're working, I believe we've covered a lot for a 20-inch snowstorm. The last thing I will note is that we did make an announcement this year that we were going to try to run the snow emergency ban two months from January 1st to February 28th.

Ending the overnight parking ban on January 28th really depends upon how much snow is on the streets in the last week of February. And we're going to assess very carefully what the weather looks like over the course of the next two weeks. If the snow banks are remaining at the size that they are right now, my recommendation is going to be extending the overnight parking ban into the month of March because We are still benefiting from having the cars off the street on those overnights for emergency vehicle access, for snow removal purposes, for just addressing the ability to get around the city. Once a car sits and stays in the same spot for days on end, and especially if we have another snowstorm on top of it, it could be a challenge. Now, I am hoping for two weeks of really warm weather. My understanding is it's snowing tonight. It might snow again this weekend. It's supposed to turn to rain just after that, I hope.

If that warm weather really starts to take these snow banks back, maybe we can stick to that plan, but I just want the council to know that we are monitoring that situation. So that is my perspective on snow. onto the more complicated issue of ICE. I received some questions recently about the relationship between local government and federal immigration enforcement. as we've seen federal officers more actively seeking and arresting people in the surges that they've done in many communities. I've been asked what this means for Watertown. Nationally we are experiencing things as a country that have been very unsettling for a lot of people, especially for immigrant families. and Watertown has a lot of immigrant families. In the past year, visits from ICE to Watertown have been pretty limited. and we certainly hope it stays that way. But people have asked what will happen if ICE starts doing some sort of more ramped up action in the Boston area or in Watertown specifically.

In general, this situation remains as it has been over the past year. So first, I want to talk about what is outside of what I call my circle of control here in local government. It seems to be a topic of discussion tonight, but I didn't plan that relative to other topics of discussion, but I just want to share ICE is a federal agency that's permitted to enforce federal immigration laws. And there's nothing I can do as a city manager to do anything other than acknowledge that as a starting point. We are a part of a statewide and a federal government system where there are certain abilities for federal agents and officers to act within our city. and I work with the starting point of understanding and respecting that. And in many circumstances, they're doing very valid criminal investigations. There are some circumstances we've seen recently that have really

required a lot of people to ask where and how this is all going at this point beyond that, but they're still federal immigration agents. When we look within our circle of influence running a local government, there are a few things that we can address. The first being how our local police work and act as it relates to ICE. As Chief Hanrahan shared in January this year, it's not the role of the Watertown Police Department to enforce the federal immigration regulations. their duty is to protect and serve everyone who lives, works, or visits our city, no matter where they were born or where they call home. Watertown Police have official policies that note that the enforcement of the nation's federal immigration laws is the responsibility of the federal government. Accordingly, the Watertown Police does not undertake immigration related investigations unless attached to significant felony violations. A person coming into contact with the police department shall be afforded all of the civil rights, due process, and equal protection safeguards available under the Constitution

the laws of the United States, the laws of the Commonwealth, and the laws of this city, irrespective of the person's immigration or documentation status. and as we noted in our police department brochure for immigrants that we published many years ago, which we do have at the police station and still available online, We don't ask about immigration status, we don't detain people at the request of immigration officers, we don't share information with other government registries based upon immigration status, and we don't participate in civil immigration raids. Police will not interrogate a person at the request of an ICE agent. They will not independently facilitate an immigration rate or facilitate an agent's access or entry to a dwelling. They also will not impede the rights of any person engaging in lawful, peaceful protest or assembly. The reality is though that when ICE comes to Watertown, which has happened occasionally, sometimes they share what they're doing with local police and sometimes they do not.

it is helpful when they share that information because when we know they're in Watertown it's safer for our officers when they hear the action first from ICE rather than first from a resident phone call but nonetheless When this occurs, when there's an action in Watertown, members of the Watertown Police Department may, however, separate and apart from the agents, find themselves in a situation where they're called to ensure the safety of the public during the immigration raid. Based upon that I will say there has been confusion about one issue. Recently our police were asked to answer two different questions about the type of actions that ICE could undertake. and I want to address the two answers and why they're different, why they're the same even though they were answers to different questions. As noted many months ago when asked by a member of the council, the police will not intervene in an ICE arrest.

As we said, when they do call, it helps to know that an ICE operation is going on because if we then get a call that says a group of men with masks and guns are showing up at this address, it helps if we don't respond thinking we're intervening in a robbery or intervening in a kidnapping. it's safer for everyone involved if we know going into the situation what's going on. But sometimes that does not occur. And separately, a resident recently asked an officer if the police would respond if someone called and said there's people with guns and masks breaking into my home. And the answer is of course police would respond to this as they would respond to any call. but if on arrival they find that those are federal agents who are engaging in a federal law enforcement action, they're not going to intervene to stop that action as they cannot do so. So the questions, while they may seem similar or different, and there was some confusion in this perspective that they said they would respond or they said they wouldn't respond, police will respond to a 911 call.

Police will step in to intervene in a burglary or kidnapping, as any community should expect their police department should do. But they're not able to intervene to stop a federal law enforcement action. if you feel at risk, please don't hesitate to call 911. Understanding that while working in the same space as federal agents, there are circumstances where federal agents have protections under federal law and cannot be obstructed by police or the public and we're going to do our best to do the things that our police department know how to do, and that is deescalate situations and if there are those in need of any sort of medical assistance, work with our first responders to render aid in those needs. that can become difficult with federal officials involved. But please, calling 911 is always an option.

understanding the circumstances surrounding the federal and local relationships is also important. There have been some recent discussions in communities about about going a step further on this. And I just want to share some of them. First, about investigating criminal conduct by federal officials. This is a complicated topic. the extent to which local police investigating the action of a federal official is within our circle of influence is actually more complicated. and my suggestion at this time is that a bystander who sees what they believe to be a criminal conduct by a federal agent, especially if they end up recording, which is never a bad thing, what they believe to be criminal conduct by a federal agent, can certainly collect that information and share that information with local officials. And we can share that information with the Attorney General, with state officials, et cetera. ICE agents have been observed doing things that are not done the same way that our local officials are trained. There's a way that our police officers are trained to do certain things

to stop someone in a vehicle, to approach a peaceful protester, to address somebody who is blocking their ability to do a police action, et cetera. what ICE agents are doing, some of that may be criminal, some of that may just be that they're not at the same high standard that we've come to expect from our local police, and certainly that I've come to expect from our local police, and I know we can depend on from our local police. At this time, what a local or state officer can do in cases like this remains unclear. My local colleagues are seeking more guidance from our state attorney general's office and will continue to do so. But I would say if you're a peaceful protester and you record something that you think might be a criminal action, sharing it with local officials isn't a bad thing. It's still a question as to how much it's in our control if we can do something under those circumstances.

One area that may or may not be within our control, or may be within our control, I should say, there are some communities that are placing restrictions on access by federal agents in the non-public areas of public buildings. private office, or a room where a particular local training or meeting is going on where people signed up to be there. Our understanding from discussions we've had is that the non-public spaces even within our public buildings can likely be restricted and we can hold that restriction up unless someone arrives with a judicial warrant. I'll add that does not stop a federal agent from waiting in a hallway or a parking lot, but that is something that may be in our toolkit and we will investigate the extent to which it can be. It is a concern that sometimes federal agents wear clothes indicating themselves as police when they're federal and not local officials. Our officers are required, our local officers here in Watertown are required to provide a name and badge number when requested. and all our uniformed officers have name tags.

From that, you should be able to identify they've got the uniformed officers have the Watertown seal on a patch on their shoulder, they have a name tag. Those are our local officers who are trained to the standards of our local officers. There's been an interest in a conversation about restricting federal agents so they have to follow similar police policies, so they don't wear masks, so they have to identify themselves by name, et cetera. but it is not likely that local government can compel such an action from a federal agency. I don't think we can pass a local rule to tell federal agents to do that. that is likely an issue of federal policy and that's an issue for Congress and I think there certainly has been some conversation at that level to do that, but that's essentially where we are. Finally, I just want to share that in addition to depending upon our own local team to do the best we can,

It has been shared with me in a number of forums on a number of occasions that there has been a trained force of people, trained force of volunteers, that are supporting efforts to observe and record ICE actions. Their goals, as I understand it, being to hold the agents to the same standards that we hold our own local police. So, well, what I'm about to say is not an endorsement by the city government. If you want to learn more about their efforts, you can look into the group LOOSE that's run by the Immigrant Justice Network of Massachusetts. and that people can call the Luce hotline if they see ice out there that number 617-370-5023 allows that group to be alerted that they can observe the action safely and like we said you know we will not impede upon the right of any person engaging in a lawful, peaceful protest or assembly. This isn't intended to encourage folks to intervene with federal agents, but to...

the understanding is they have worked on figuring out how to observe and understand and get a perspective on what's going on. Again, I can't really endorse this organization's service, but I'm sharing that it's out there for those who want to use it. This certainly has become a complex issue and a topic of discussion in a lot of communities. I will work closely with our legal team. I've sat on a monthly call with the Attorney General's office about this issue. I understand there's some conversations with the District Attorney and the Human Rights Commission here in Watertown about this issue. We're going to do our best in the administration to I think I shared at a point in time when I was doing one of our early budget hearings at a time when there's a lot of challenges at other levels of government and there's a lot of work to be done to interact with other levels of government. My first focus here is to be the best version of the local government that we can be here in Watertown and to

set the standard for quality and the standard for doing things that are still proving that there is still a level and a form of government that can that can be as supportive to its community as possible. I'm committed to that. Our local police department is committed to that. I know these circumstances are complicated. I haven't at this point heard of any interest in ICE further ramping up activities in Watertown. Some circumstances where they have been doing it have actually been where they've come in here sort of chasing people in from other communities. We do continue to monitor the situation and what we can do and will continue to do that. If individual councillors or members of the public have any questions of me, feel free to reach out. members of public can always email that city manager at watertownma.gov email address and I will do my best to try to to try to address specific concerns. But that's where we are at this point in time. And thank you, Mr. President, for indulging me the time to talk about both of those issues. Thank you.

Thank you. Requests for information? Any requests for information? Councilor Feltner.

Thank you. I ask that we are provided with a list of Watertown resources slash facilities that contains the contact information and the process that places that are available for public community meetings as a result of mitigation or planning efforts on new or redevelopment projects. I also keep getting a lot of questions about when might we be able to add parking violation reports to see click fix. Lastly, I don't know if the manager wants to explain further now or not, but there are many C-Click fixed tickets showing as closed that were reported for sidewalks being blocked but the blockages remain so it's unclear to me what that's about so I don't know if you want to do that request for information or how you handle that but that's the last one.

Any other requests, Councilor?

I just have a question about regarding ICE, if there is any city-owned property that is available to ICE for whatever purposes, whether it be staging or anything like that.

Any other requests? Announcements. Any announcements? Councilor Gardner.

I just want to make a brief clarification to the manager's remarks. For those of you who would like to look up that organization he mentioned, Luce, Not a clarification, but it is spelled L-U-C-E, often pronounced Luce, L-U-C-E. The words at the bottom of the screen had L-O-O-S-E, which will not get you to that organization, so thank you.

Any other announcements? Feltner.

I'd just like to let the public know about last minute change to agenda that rules and ordinances will be meeting tomorrow evening at 7 o'clock and not at 6 o'clock to consider the skip the stuff new Plastic Accessories Ordinance.

Any other announcements? Public forum. Any member of the public here or at home wish to be heard? Okay.

Again, Elodia Thomas, 67 Marion Road. I don't know if I should thank both Doug and Brendan or one, but I wanna say I really appreciate what you did for request for information, setting up a clear form with clear, you know, background, et cetera. Whoever did it, great job. I'm also getting a lot of complaints about open meeting law. I don't know if you saw the article in the Herald the other day. but I think we need something very special with regard to agendas and attachments. We are failing, certain committees are really failing on this. Things are going in months later. I've called several committees to complain. They seem to think they can do whatever they want. And I don't think that's the rule. So I don't know if we need a standard agenda form that people follow. I do not understand how they do not watch our council, because we have the best documentation, I think. I've watched other communities, other meetings, and the agenda and the touch materials are always in place.

but in the last week I've gone to three different meetings that I've seen and they're failing. So I don't know if that's on you, Mr. Manager, because it's for boards, commissions, and committees. We have a lot of new people coming on board. They don't know what they're doing. and this is really important. So the more we can kind of straighten and streamline this, I think it'd be ideal. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else here at home? Yes.

Adrian Hauke again, Jefferson Avenue. On the remarks of the code enforcement, I did some quick math and it sounds like 50 warnings and fines have been issued. So we're about nine business days after the storm now. And so I think that comes down to about three probably mostly warnings per day per code enforcement officer. I think that's insufficient to make sure that the public is safe on our sidewalks. So I would like to ask that we maybe think about how we can make that more efficient. you know our parking enforcement officers have little handheld devices so maybe we can make sure that they have some kind of device like that. And maybe they can also get some help from other staff during a snow emergency and the days immediately following.

they're not completely alone because I'm hearing a lot from 311 and code enforcement that there's only two officers but I think we have the power to change that and to make sure that we're all making sure that we can get around. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Can I get a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Thank you.