INFO-2022-5 : Multiple Member Appointive Body Information (Item # 9615)

Transcript (~30 min @ 15:00)

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▶ 14:53 Mark Garipay: thank you so much thank you councillor Garipay thank you madam chair at this time i'll make a motion to recommend for passage order 2022-78 second second so we have a motion made by

▶ 15:00 Jen Grigoraitis: councillor Garipay seconded by councillor stewart to recommend for passage all in favor okay and that passes thank you chief for being here this will go to the full council next week

▶ 15:15 Jen Grigoraitis: in the interest of hopefully brevity i would entertain a motion to take order info 2022-5 out of order so that we have more time for the housing production plan

▶ 15:27 Leila Migliorelli: motion to take info 2022-5 out of order second so motion to take order info 2022-5 out of order

▶ 15:32 Jen Grigoraitis: made by vice chair migliorelli seconded by councillor eccles all in favor all right okay that so now that order is before us and i'll just read it info 2022-5 multiple member appointive body information item number 9615 and i believe margot fleishman from the administration is here to speak with us good evening madam chair good evening i'm just going to turn it quickly over

▶ 15:59 Jen Grigoraitis: to chair Migliorelli is one of the vice chair Migliorelli is one of the co-sponsors of the order

▶ 16:05 Leila Migliorelli: thank you madam chairwoman thank you um for being here miss fleishman um i wanted to just take an opportunity to also thank the clerk city clerk and clerk of committees um for their research and pulling together the information for this order tonight um i would say it's pretty eye-opening to see the results um there are 56 people serving expired terms um one-third of all the boards and commissions have um ex chairs who are serving expired terms um and they're 18 vacancies um so i i feel like it's you know i wasn't expecting to see this in in the report um i think the goal was to create um have this roll into um a website that people could find could find out um if they want to get involved if they want to volunteer on boards and commissions um that they could go and see that there but it seems like we've uncovered another issue in terms of people serving beyond their time some people who have been appointed by prior administrations who are still serving and these are people who are dedicated volunteers who make a lot of our financial and regulatory decisions throughout the city i think many people often come to the council or to the mayor's office looking for information on um you know traffic decisions uh we have you know planning board decisions and things like that that are are made solely at the discretion of those boards and commissions so i think we need to be um transparent in in who are in the membership um and given that the city council approves both appointments and reappointments to these boards and commissions i think it's um on on our on us too as well to to be there uh to make sure that that this is being managed properly. And I know that the clerk of committees had done some research. There's other cities who are doing this well, who have websites that enable people to search for boards and commissions positions and look at vacancies, find out what type of boards and commissions they are and what their purpose is. So it's something I'm hoping that the city of Melrose can kind of move towards.

▶ 18:06 Speaker 5: Thank you, Ms. Fleischman.

▶ 18:08 Speaker 6: Well, thank you for the opportunity to come before you to speak to this. As you know, I've been in this position for about nine months and certainly the status of our board and commissions has been one of concern. And I have really very appreciative to the clerk of committees, Andrew Gabriel, for having helped put together a comprehensive document where we can really see it is an ungainly amount of information and it does require time to go and research the terms of all of the members. And then from our point of view, from the administration point of view to go through committee, board and commission by court board and commission to address the terms. And as you've seen, we've started to send down and we'll continue to send down in as quick as possible a timeframe, the reappointments and appointments to the boards and commissions. As you know, the members whose terms have expired continue to be allowed to hold over until there is a reappointment or appointment of a new person. And in some cases, this question of ascertaining the interest on the part of the individual whose term has expired as to whether or not they wish to continue serving. And then of course, recruiting new volunteers to fill the vacancies. In terms of making that information more transparent to the Melrose community, you may be aware that the city is in the process of upgrading our website of redesigning the look and feel of our website. And it's a high priority of our administration to ensure that the information about the boards and commissions is much easier to find. We intend to take a couple of steps. One, if you go to the individual board or commission, at this point, it's a very sort of haphazard mix of sometimes you can see the list of appointees and the list of vacancies, and sometimes you can't. So we will make that consistent. There's also a page on the mayor's area of the website where you can see volunteer opportunities. We are gonna make sure that that includes the lists of vacancies, which it does not currently, and also promote that and make it an easier to find through creating a get involved button on the homepage and allowing people to see what the opportunities are to serve. That process is ongoing. We're about maybe a quarter to a third of the way through of the website redesign. when the new website launches it's certainly our intention to make that information much easier

▶ 20:44 Jen Grigoraitis: for people to find are there questions from counselors counselor eccles thank you madam

▶ 20:49 Jack Eccles: chair thank you miss fleishman for being here is there any cause for concern about decisions um of impact that have been made with boards where a majority of people have their term expired or is

▶ 21:04 Speaker 6: it a law that no so i i've checked with the city solicitor and it's based on case law that there's a holdover provision that allows those individuals to continue to serve until they are either reappointed or they have been replaced so i don't believe that there's any jeopardy for any of the decisions that have been taken by any of the boards or commissions relative to the information i received from the city solicitor thank you councillor williams if you had to say a rough

▶ 21:30 Ryan Williams: timeline for completion of this new website ballpark it um six months a year five years oh

▶ 21:38 Speaker 6: no no no so this is just it's a it's a refresh of our existing website we have completed the sort of look and feel phase where it was with a designer we're moving into the implementation phase where it would be someone who'd be helping us ascertain the relevancy of the information and the ease of navigation of the website i'm going to say weeks to months before the relaunch depending upon how long it takes takes them on the on the civic plus side to complete the process for us thank you

▶ 22:09 Jen Grigoraitis: counselor mcmaster and then president sanella thank you madam chair good evening thank you

▶ 22:12 Shawn M. MacMaster: for being here will all members of multiple member bodies where terms have expired be given first preference to continue serving in those respective capacities if they choose to continue serving

▶ 22:25 Speaker 6: i can't speak for all members of all bodies i think that we're going board and commission by board and commission to ascertain whether or not people are interested in serving and then certainly um the mayor will make his decisions about who whom to appoint so the first step is

▶ 22:38 Shawn M. MacMaster: just identifying if the if the interest to correct thank you thank you president sneller um he kind

▶ 22:46 Christopher Cinella: of answered that but i guess so the website is underway but we've had a few reappointments already without a website so i guess with this many folks that are expired can't call just be made i mean is that is it a matter do you want to still serve yes i mean and granted you know many of these folks you know they've been around for a while a lot of them i've seen you know joan cassidy for one i mean she's involved in everything and she's given up time going back before i was even born and that's what i think melrose is blessed from the standpoint we have so many people that want to volunteer and be a part of these different organizations but i guess it's a fine line between respecting someone like a joan cassidy and also a new resident moving in who wants to be involved so i guess what's the process been so far that we've seen some

▶ 23:42 Speaker 6: reappointments sure so just to clarify the website is our one of the means that we have at our disposal to advertise the vacancies we do not currently have a means of collecting the volunteer information easily from the website and i know that clerk of committees is looking for more streamlined ways to allow people to align to apply upload resumes and to collect the information in an easier to manage format so in terms of publicizing we will use the the website press releases the city news other means to get the word out of vacancies but honestly the the information that that mr gobriel provided to us in terms of the specificity of the terms that have expired is really helping us because then we can contact those individuals whose terms have expired and and sometimes there is a little bit of a research project to find their correct email or phone numbers because again it's a data management problem problem we don't always have those things at our fingertips but we are going through and and calling or emailing or contacting those people um in in advance of the the new website being uh the new design of the website that sort of one doesn't have anything to do with the other thank you councillor Garipay um

▶ 25:02 Mark Garipay: just a council of mcmaster's point not really a question kind of just a comment i know we don't control who the mayor is going to appoint we approve them but i would like to think that if we have a member on one of these boards and i was shocked we got some from 2010 that have been serving in the community well and they still want to serve that they would be uh recommended for reappointment um they've been they've been doing their they've been serving the community even without the reappointment and if they want to serve i would like to think that we would we would honor that uh honor that request um so that's just more of a statement thank you anyone

▶ 25:46 Speaker 5: else for the first time counselor williams uh thank you for and then vice chairman thanks for

▶ 25:52 Ryan Williams: giving me the second go around um i just wanted to to build off a little bit of what some of my my colleagues said um and maybe speak to um speak to some thoughts i had on the other side of that equation if we have somebody who's been serving the city for a very long time in a certain capacity i think certainly it's important that we think about the term of their service we think about the contributions they've made and we think about their values and the priorities that they've set but these are bodies that have a lot of technical control over the city of melrose planning board the zoning board they decide how the city appears how it functions block by block what buildings get built and what buildings don't get built so i would i would encourage the mayor to review all appointments through the lens of where melrose is today well where melrose is going tomorrow i'm certainly we're sitting here talking about the housing production plan and maybe 80 percent of these actions are dependent on the planning board to pass them so i wouldn't think that we would just look at a person who's been serving on a council for a very long time and use that as a as a reason to to reappoint without discussion i would want to see that we we have a thorough discussion about all of the possible candidates and we can decide what serves the best interests of the city at large.

▶ 27:16 Jen Grigoraitis: For the first time, Councilor Cromchady.

▶ 27:18 Manjula Karamcheti: Thank you so much for being here. I so appreciate the collection of this information and to really get a better sense of what all the boards and commissions are and who are seated on them and understand how long people have been on the boards and commissions. The question I have, and as a newer counselor, I'm curious, is there any process for evaluating the goals and effectiveness of the boards and commissions in relation to like who is serving and what is happening and how the boards and commissions are contributing to the city? Just wanna get a better understanding of how we determine if the boards and commissions are serving our city in the ways that we hope they would.

▶ 28:03 Speaker 6: Well, in my limited tenure here, I can't say that I'm aware of a systematic way that that is done. I do know that for many of our most important boards, they are staffed by city staff members, such as the Planning Board, Zoning Board of Appeals. And we have much greater insight into how those boards are functioning. And obviously, you can see their work plan moving forward through the permits that are granted or the you know the the ordinances that are are proposed uh relative to you know as we say our built environment i think it probably varies from board and commission to board and commission and certainly would take that into consideration in terms of our information gathering in the future about ascertaining how things are going for boards and commissions because certainly people are volunteering their time to benefit the community and we want to make sure that their time is well spent and their boards and commissions are effective absolutely

▶ 28:59 Manjula Karamcheti: and just a follow-up question to that in terms of who is on these committees is there anything like in terms of composition of the boards representing different ideas parts of the community like having are there like youth in different populations represented is there like a template or an interest in that do we look for a diverse representation in our boards and committees do we look for youth voice do we like what goes into that part of the process you know

▶ 29:34 Speaker 6: in some cases you're looking for people with certain skills backgrounds uh experience certainly from the point of view of recruiting new volunteers it's it's a it's a challenge especially to bring in people of different stages in their lives because it is um you know hard to make time to to volunteer for example if you're a you know working parent something like that there's some some facts on the ground that are are hard to uh to to sometimes mitigate but we certainly have an interest in and reaching a more diverse group of potential volunteers and inviting them into city government understanding that not everyone at every stage of life is is really able to donate as much time to to the work of city government as you might perhaps if you're volunteered or you know a student if you're if you're retired for example um there is no magic formula uh in in terms of composition of the board we're looking for good quality people with skills that they're willing and able to donate toward to the city great thank you so much i appreciate that

▶ 30:43 Leila Migliorelli: vice chairman gliorelli thank you um just a few follow-up questions so who would you say is ultimately responsible for managing the boards and commissions the process to recruit members I mean is that something you see within the mayor's purview yes

▶ 30:58 Speaker 6: it certainly is I mean I think it's a collaborative process between the mayor's office the city clerk the clerk of committees to make sure that we have the most accurate information about the terms and then who is constituting each board the Commission but ultimately any board or commission that's appointed by the mayor that process will be managed in the mayor's office to make sure that as we see those terms expiring that we are doing the outreach to the individuals ascertaining if they wish to be appointed or recruiting new people and I don't think that necessarily will have a hundred percent of every vacancy filled on every board or commission it's just not probably feasible because people have to step off for one reason or another but it's certainly a goal of mine to ensure that going forward that the mayor's office is able to stay ahead of that in a more meaningful way so we don't

▶ 31:52 Leila Migliorelli: wind up in the situation again right because i'm assuming then prior to the clerk of committees pulling together this information you are not operating off of any central system that told

▶ 32:02 Speaker 6: you who was up for reappointment or we had we had some spreadsheets with incomplete information and And so that made it just all the harder to move forward in a sort of concerted sort of way without having it all sort of verified. There were lots of terms and information missing from the information that I had when I first started here. And then just one thing or another intervened with us moving forward. And until we had the verification of the terms, we were not necessarily cognizant of all of the boards permissions that were we're really needing more attention I would argue

▶ 32:40 Leila Migliorelli: that's a really important role I'm just given all we've been talking about in terms of the role that these positions play within the city is to just make sure that we stay on top of that moving forward there's just a few other pieces within the code that I kind of wanted to address so the code says that all public note that all public notice shall be given for all vacancies is that happening so let's say I mean up until now or the last nine months that you've in the position are you um or is the mayor's office providing public no notices when um positions or openings or when you're actively recruiting for um a board of commission so i

▶ 33:14 Speaker 6: would say that the opportunity volunteer opportunities uh web page on the mayor's office would be the place where that information could be made public it has not to my knowledge been being made public it was more an ad hoc sort of thing as we as we had people for example people resign from and a and a vacancy occur then there might be an attempt to um to publicize that but not in a concerted where you could go and see all the vacancies on an ongoing basis okay

▶ 33:44 Leila Migliorelli: the other piece and um counselor karen chidi touched on this is that um in the code it references that the boards and commissions will provide annual reports to the city council in the fall of every year we haven't been receiving that i know that city clerk had done a training for chairs and started to address some of that but since you know I've been on the council I don't know if Councillor McMaster can speak to what happened previously we haven't received any annual report so then there is no that's part of the code and something it seems like would offer a check and balance to these boards and commissions the other piece of the code that mentions is that we should be having representatives working with each of the chairs of all of all the boards and commissions that's not happening either and there's some pretty detailed information about what that type of relationship should be looking like so I would just advise that in moving forward that we try to set up some systems that would account for this because because it's law it's in our code and we should be doing it but it also provides that check and balance and just one last thing on reappointments I I think that I know we had at the last meeting a slew of reappointments for one of the boards and I personally would feel uncomfortable just authorizing reappointments moving forward is particularly when there's a gap of let's say over six months that the person hasn't been appointed it's I feel like any of reappointments that need to be made for people who have not who have exceeded that period of time we should be treating them as appointments that that would be my recommendation because essentially then what we've been doing is sort of rubber rubber stamping people come in front of us by not reviewing they're not appearing the the um candidates are not appearing um there's no one from the administration or no one who none of the staff people who are uh the point people for the commissions are appearing and we're just sort of looking at the reappointments and saying again you know yes yes yes and i believe that was a practice before as well so i feel like that's part of the reason why we've maybe have gotten into this issue is that there is not a rigorous review of appointees for boards and commissions and i think it's

▶ 35:54 Jen Grigoraitis: it's something that we should consider moving forward anyone else councillor

▶ 35:58 Jack Eccles: Eccles Thank You manager one of my questions was about the reports that councillor Migliorelli asked and you know I'll just say I'd be willing if there's case to be made that there's some sort of oversight redundancy to remove or change the code in any way but it does seem a little weird right now that there's an inconsistency between the code and in practice so I think we either need to resolve that or change the code my other question is is who is responsible for ensuring that all boards and commissions are complying by the open meeting law

▶ 36:32 Speaker 6: so the city solicitor and the city clerk ran a required seminar essentially for boards and all boards and commissions on open meeting law because it is obviously our responsibility to make sure that everyone who is appointed understands open meeting law i think that there is um you know sort of a variety of understanding and so bringing everybody up to the same level so that information was provided not too long ago by the city solicitor i just want to acknowledge

▶ 37:02 Jen Grigoraitis: we have clerk foot here and you're welcome to join at the podium if you wish to address that question oh and uh clerk of committees gabriel you're gonna have to pull up a chair sorry

▶ 37:15 Speaker 6: Okay, sort of to piggyback off Margot, Andrew and I on January 6th conducted a training for all of the chairpersons of our current point of bodies and covered everything in A201 of the administrative code. Including, you need to provide in a report, you need to provide minutes within 30 days or three meetings. We covered open meeting law, what needs to be on an agenda. I think we covered pretty much everything in here. that they were aware of rules, regulations, responsibilities, and actually sort of their responsibility in terms of how they're running their meetings. And we covered public comment. We handed them a, they received a presentation. It was wonderfully, it was wonderful. It was very interesting. Some people have never been to a training. Some have had some, we offered the state ethics that's run by the Attorney General's office, told them to take that. And then on January 19th, Shannon Phillips, the City Solicitor, and Amy Lindquist, the School Solicitor. They conducted a training for all appointed body members, anyone who was available to come. They covered open meeting law, public records. That too was very interesting. They had another PowerPoint presentation available, and I think we've done a really good job about talking about their relationship with the Council, their relationship with their own members and bodies, how the terms run, how they can stagger. And I think it was helpful for us to sort of give these volunteers, essentially, the support, education, and training that we can. I would like to note one thing in your list of boards and commissions that was recently uncovered during our research. There are three boards and commissions that have special municipal employee status. One is listed here as Board of Trustees. The other one, thanks actually to Chair Sampson and the Planning Board, is the Planning Board. And the third one is the Historic District Commission. historic district was 2016 and planning what was 2008 and I have sent both of those to general code to be added to our code online as well.

▶ 39:17 Speaker 2: So we have been working with doing a lot of research to see what kind of software out there would help enable the city to put this information for the for members of the public so they can easily access you know who's on what board and commission and one of the one the huge goals is to find something that would be in line with the website and the refresh that we're doing currently so that's the work in progress and we did you know look at one with granicus who also granicus is the company that also serves our agenda and meeting portal through iqm2 and they had a really good software solid package that we are actually looking at pretty closely right now um neil however the i.t director would like to vet more uh programs and and software companies before a decision is reached um so uh he is it is my understanding i did uh uh catch up with him briefly today it is my understanding that he's gonna uh work again to connect with uh granicus or iqm2 to see if the software that's offered through them would uh be um you know good for the city um and uh once that has happened we will go from there um he did ask that i do a little more research and and find out what other vendors uh might be

▶ 40:49 Speaker 2: compatible to use um so we'll see we'll see what happens there but this is the status as of now um we're waiting for neil to uh meet with the with redicus and we'll go from there and provide you

▶ 41:03 Speaker 6: not do this after what we loved about the software that we looked at it was very proactive meaning if you if you're a resident interested in the board started an application walked away from your computer came back or you know left it would say hey you started this are you still interested to your to your inbox so it took a lot of the administrative tasks this is very administrative heavy all the reminders and so the follow-up stuff you know this very strict restrictions in the air on when we have to take the oath and that kind of thing so the software was very excellent that's why we liked it and it was relatively inexpensive if i could just add one

▶ 41:35 Speaker 2: more thing um this software also would provide a an email list of uh commission members board members that are set to expire like 30 days prior so that that would give the mayor's office of anyone who's working in this capacity the advance notice to bring this uh to uh for reappointment or to see if they need to you know reach out for any vacancies or for new members so that's a very helpful um helpful thing that this software does have and um i think i think that would you know streamline processes going forward after all the heavy and uh work is done at the beginning

▶ 42:16 Jack Eccles: thank you i just had one one piece of feedback on the open meeting law question and that is that um you know as somebody who tries to keep in you know an understanding what the boards and commissions are doing it's oftentimes hard to follow even if they are technically complying by the open meeting law for example if they're going to vote on a policy oftentimes the fact that they're voting on a policy is listed on the agenda but the details of said policy are not which can be confusing for the public to not kind of understand what they should or should not provide public comment on so that's just kind of a piece of feedback as far as say a little more

▶ 42:51 Jack Eccles: say more about it so so for example the city council when we vote on something there's an agenda packet and there's materials associated with whatever we're voting on oftentimes for border commission it would just list in a pdf right what the policy is and it's helpful to have the details in advance for a member of the public to follow along that would be something

▶ 43:15 Jen Grigoraitis: we'd have to look at with iqm yep thanks any other questions from counselors um i just wanted to take a moment as one of the co-authors of this order first to thank the three of you i recognize that you're all new in your roles and that you certainly cannot own what came before you but i appreciate that there is an effort to try to course correct going forward because it seems like we have some pretty significant course correction to do and while i appreciate that we are meeting the letter of the law which i think is the floor for all of us we want to be legally compliant it's really concerning to me that we have so many members who are so significantly out of date for being reappointed i mean we have a chair who was his appointment expired in 2018 and i would think that also is concerning for those members as well so i really hope this is something that we correct quickly and would be eager to hear timelines for when things are going to get taken care of rather than just it's going to happen soon and just to the questions around the the makeup of these boards and commissions i mean to be perfectly candid there's at least three where the membership is entirely male um maybe that's needed based on the role what those boards and commissions do but i also think we would like something that is reflective of the makeup of our city and would hope that that's something that's taken into consideration going forward so i echo counselor Migliorelli for me i don't see these as reappointments i see them as appointments when we're talking about people who are one year two year three years into a new term um but i think i'm excited to see what you all send down to us going forward so thank you are there any other counselors wishing to speak okay i'll entertain a motion to place on file motion to place some