ORDER-2021-73 : Appointment of Kate Monea to the Historical Commission for a term to expire on the last day of February 2023

Transcript (~10 min @ 3:19)

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▶ 3:18 Maya Jamaleddine: so order 2021-73 appointment of jay manoa to the historical commission for a term to expire on the last day of february 2023 we have a motion uh made by councillor stewart to suspend the rule seconded by councillor thomas madam clerk can you call the room there's a melody yes

▶ 3:39 Speaker 1: yes councilor Eccles yes councilor stewart yes councilor thomas yes president yes success Yes. Can I bring them in? Yes, please.

▶ 3:56 Speaker 3: Am I good?

▶ 3:57 Speaker 1: Yes. Terrific.

▶ 4:15 Paul Brodeur: Madam Chair, members of the committee, President Sunil, thank you all very much for the opportunity to speak to you about a very important appointment to the Mellor's Historical Commission. Today, I'm offering the nomination of Kate Monea, and Kate, please correct me if I am saying your name incorrectly, I get concerned about that quite a bit. So Kate has been working with the Commission for some time now, essentially in it, well, all the Commissioners are volunteers, but I guess in an unofficial capacity without having the title. And if you've had a chance to review her resume and her qualifications, she is literally that someone born and trained for this for this particular service probably from the day she stepped out of high school and perhaps before. She's experienced archivist, preservationist, historian, museum manager. Really, I can't say enough about the range of skills that she brings to the table. And the commission is designed to tap on a wealth of skills, abilities, and experience. And I think a lot of people tend to think of it mostly as a building preservation or building history. And their mission is, quite frankly, that is part of it, but it is much broader than that. um and this is something that kate will be able to foster really is a unique skill set even among the members of the commission and i suspect when you chat with her you'll hear about not only about that skill set about some really um unique ideas about how to engage the community about how to engage our students um about oral history and the kind of the full range of things that we really can do as a commission as and as a community um to really embody reflect on memorialize and learn from our history i couldn't be more delighted to offer who will be i think the first woman to serve on the commission certainly the they will be the only woman on the current roster should you uh in your wisdom decide to move her nomination forward uh with that i offer her for your consideration

▶ 6:47 Maya Jamaleddine: and your questions thank you thank you mayor and um i would like to uh give um the floor to

▶ 6:58 Speaker 5: mrs monea if you'd like to say a few words hello everyone um you got my name right it's monet like the painter so um that's usually what i tell people but i want to thank mayor broder and the city council members and also members of the historical commission for giving me the opportunity to apply for this position. Like Mayor Broder said, I've been sitting in on meetings and kind of helping in an extra volunteer capacity since April of 2019. Submitted my application to join right before the pandemic and then everything fell apart with that, so I'm happy to have this opportunity to join the commission. Some of the things I've helped them out with in the past um specifically was the um the research your home night um and that's one thing that i really enjoyed um so looking forward to helping out with that again and then also some other projects hopefully that will help educate the community and um yeah looking forward to it

▶ 7:57 Maya Jamaleddine: thank you great thank you do we have counselor thomas thank you madam chairperson mr mayor

▶ 8:04 Cory Thomas: welcome miss monet welcome um mayor broder you're you're batting a thousand in 2021 with these um These appointments to all these commissions in Melrose, I said it last week when we had a few people in and it continues today with Ms. Monet, incredible qualifications, education and background, worldwide travel to Seoul and Ireland, some of the best buildings and places in Boston, you know radcliffe and the boston public library and old ironsides um you know your qualifications speak for themselves and melrose and any other community in the commonwealth of mass would be lucky to have you so welcome and and i couldn't strongly um back this nomination so so thank you for being here thank you i appreciate that anyone else would like to

▶ 9:11 Leila Migliorelli: last question vice chair mcgrally thank you miss monet for being here and i'm also excited about your application i think you'd be a great fit for this role i'm just curious about your background um with digital archives if you have any thoughts on the differences between preserving history and sort of like a physical sense versus an online sense i know that there's been some conversations around town about um you know honoring melrose's history and just wondered if you had thoughts on um doing that in you know physical um you know face-to-face kind of thing um plaques and things

▶ 9:45 Speaker 5: like that versus something online yeah that's a great question and of course it's something that archivists are grappling with all the time um a lot of things are born digital now um but there's still that you still want to archive the the analog items as well um the digital items presented a difficult preservation challenge because technology changes constantly and so you're always trying to preserve it and meet the newest technology but I think the way to handle it would be to do it both in concert so actually something I'm hopefully going to be helping to work on is a pandemic experiences project which would allow people to share their experiences both in physical form whether it's written on paper or drawing um or in a digital format um and the melrose public library has a really robust digital heritage collection on their website and so i think that would be a great place to start with with preserving that sort of material

▶ 10:47 Speaker 3: great thank you counselor accounts thank you for being here um i'll have to pay the the

▶ 10:51 Jack Eccles: constitution museum visit sometime that looks really cool but i might i actually um want to know what's the can you talk a little bit about the local history room at the library i don't

▶ 11:06 Speaker 5: think that was something that i was aware existed so maybe yes um so i i've also before pre-pandemic i was volunteering with shelly o'brien who's the local history librarian at the melrose public library and so the local history room is up on the second floor and um right now it's a lot of um rare books um things of that nature a lot of having to do with the history of not just melrose but the surrounding communities um and then also some great collections that have to do with people from the community um there's yearbooks from the um from the high school there are um directories of where people lived um and and then there's smaller collections for specific people and usually uh family um donate those collections after the people have passed um and so what i was helping shelly do was um sort of consulting with her in a way to um to best archive those collections and make them available for the public so yeah anytime you're at the library um post pandemic um you anyone can go right in there and look around

▶ 12:09 Jack Eccles: it's a really great collection that's that's really cool um i'd like to make a motion to

▶ 12:19 Maya Jamaleddine: recommend passage we have a motion to recommend made by councillor Eccles seconded by councillor McLeary madam clerk can you please call the roll

▶ 12:28 Speaker 1: care humanity yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

▶ 12:43 Maya Jamaleddine: motion passes congratulations and I would like to also thank you for stepping up and for your fountain and there's such a great and important role thank you so much and looking forward to working with you thank you I appreciate