ORDER-2020-112 : Appointment of David Hoff, 46 Warwick Road, to the Commission on Disability for a three-year term; said term to end on the last day of February 2023.

Transcript (~14 min @ 8:03)

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▶ 8:05 Jack Eccles: The first order on tonight's agenda, close out. The first order on tonight's agenda is Order 2020-112, Appointment of David Hoff, 46 Ward Road, to the Commission on Disability for a Three-Year Term, said term to end on the last day of February, 2023.

▶ 8:20 Speaker 1: I'm bringing in Mr. Hoff and I'm bringing in the Mayor. I'm also going to bring in Mike Sankovic, who is the Chair of the HRC.

▶ 8:30 Speaker 2: This is the Disability Commission.

▶ 8:33 Speaker 1: You're right, sorry. Yep.

▶ 8:36 Speaker 1: Sorry about that.

▶ 8:40 Jack Eccles: No worries. Seeing we have some nominees,

▶ 8:44 Speaker 1: motion to suspend the rules motion to suspend the rules second motion to suspend the rules

▶ 8:48 Jack Eccles: made by councillor gemaldi and seconded by president Grigoraitis madam clerk vice chair

▶ 8:54 Speaker 1: gemaldi yes councillor mcmaster yes councillor mcnaught councillor Migliorelli yes president

▶ 9:11 Speaker 1: Isn't Grigoraitis, Chair Eccles? Yes. Yes.

▶ 9:15 Jack Eccles: Fantastic. So we have Mr. Hoff and Mayor Brenner with us tonight. Mayor Brenner, would you like to lead off or can't see you?

▶ 9:25 Speaker 4: Yep.

▶ 9:26 Paul Brodeur: Can y'all see me? Because the phone, I'm using phone because the,

▶ 9:34 Speaker 4: there we go.

▶ 9:37 Speaker 5: Computer failed me, but the phone is a terrific backup.

▶ 9:41 Paul Brodeur: I want to thank you for considering the nominees before you this evening for various commission appointments. I think you will find that it is an outstanding array of folks that have professional and personal experience that will serve the community well.

▶ 9:59 Paul Brodeur: If you've had a chance to take a look at Mr. Hopps CV and his cover letter, I think you'll understand why it was an obvious choice to join the Commission on Disability. I've had the pleasure in a past life of working with Mr. Hoff at the Institute for Community Inclusion, which is associated with UMass Boston.

▶ 10:24 Speaker 4: He has been really in every phase of advocacy

▶ 10:26 Speaker 3: around developmental disabilities and workplace access, which is a very, very important part of the work

▶ 10:36 Speaker 4: that I think the commission can do.

▶ 10:39 Paul Brodeur: He is a trained social worker by trade, and I think you'll be very impressed when you hear from

▶ 10:42 Speaker 4: Mr. Hoff. I appreciate your consideration. Mr. Hoff, would you like to say a few words?

▶ 10:53 Speaker 3: Sure. Thank you. First off, thank you, Mr. Mayor, for putting my name forward, and thank you for this nomination. I've devoted almost 30 years of my professional life to the inclusion of people with disabilities into mainstream society and that work for me has always been part of a larger cause of just creating a much more inclusive society and much more welcoming society and certainly you know the events of this past week or so are just obviously an echo of that so i always see it as part of a larger picture um i you know my my view is that people with disabilities should be included like everybody else whether that's an employment within the community and the same rights as everyone else and they are just part of the rich diversity of our communities and of our society and this is obviously a professional passion of mine but it's also personal i have several members of my family who um have significant disabilities and so you know i deal with that in my my family as well so and i really you know one of the things I love about Melrose where my wife Karen and I have lived here for 24 years it has always been the the welcoming spirit of Melrose you know it's one community open to all and so that you know obviously and obviously should extend to folks with disabilities and I think that Melrose is in a very good position in terms of of taking a look at these issues I did serve at one point several years ago on a task force on trying to make the Melrose public schools more inclusive of students with disabilities i think we put a nice document together did a lot of hard work on that i don't know frankly in the follow-up afterwards whether whether it resulted in the kind of action we we had hoped for so but i also you know feel like this so i feel like this type of commission is very much needed in the community but at the same time i'm also confident that as a commission that will be welcomed the other thing i'd like to say so it's one thing to have sort of a technical background and understanding and i have a pretty if you look at my cv i know i know the world of disability uh you know pretty well particularly my focus is on employment but i you know i know the americans with disabilities act good working knowledge there i know the public systems both here in massachusetts and in other states and nationally fairly well but i also think that anybody who serves on any commission and any task force needs to be somebody who can work well and work in a facilitated way and be open to ideas and be willing to put their ideas forward and listen to others react to them and recognize that you know you need to work in a very much of a collaborative fashion so it's very much my style that I you know would bring to this effort so I really appreciate the opportunity to to potentially serve and happy to answer any questions anyone has

▶ 13:49 Maya Jamaleddine: thank you very much uh vice chair gemali thank you chairman and thank you mr hoff for stepping up and for all um the work that you've done in our community um i actually i would like to welcome you first and uh thank you and then uh my question is what is the first uh matter that you would like to focus on and that you feel that our city is in need and especially with our population in which population mainly you feel that they need the most attention at this time

▶ 14:24 Speaker 3: so well thank you for the question i think and i've thought about this a little bit i think it's also it's important to frankly get a sense of need out there so there's nothing that jumps out at me that says oh my gosh we've got to take care of this immediately it's not you know and again maybe Don't have a sense of what's going on out there. I think the 1st thing we do have to do is really ask the community. And as the community members, and obviously those with disabilities, their view of what is needed. So it's not like, I come in with, like, okay, these things need to be taken care of. I would say certain things are very obvious to me full access to voting. uh is a key piece um ensuring uh i would say that's kind of up there obviously i think the schools and looking at kind of are we doing i just mentioned the task force i worked on and you know my anecdotal discussions with a number of parents is um you know some frustration at times particularly around things like for example parents who've had to place their their children out of out of district which you know from my both my value standpoint is not a good thing i don't think it's a good thing for these parents and when i hear parents say you know what we ended up placing our child out of district and my child's happier and that's not a good thing and that's not a good thing for a multitude of reasons we should have schools that are fully inclusive and i also am fully cognizant of the challenges of inclusion i'm not not even say just okay that this is all just going to magically work but it's certainly something that i think the community needs to look at more closely it's not only the right thing from a value standpoint it's also very costly to taxpayers to place uh students out of districts so i would say that those are

▶ 16:00 Maya Jamaleddine: kind of two things that come to my mind uh pretty quickly absolutely i just want to say something that during you know my conversations with parents in school i've noticed that especially those that they have children uh in need or you know special needs um there is a lot of um need for us to educate those parents to be able to understand the language um so that they can uh request and uh understand what is their rights in our school system and what is the service that they can receive um in our school and in our city as well so this is something that i feel it's very much needed to educate um and provide the service for the parents of children in need thank you thank Thank you so much. And good luck. Thank you.

▶ 17:03 John N. Tramontozzi: Thank you. Mr. Chairman, although I'm not a voting member of this committee, express my wholehearted support for Mr half as a ward 1 resident. I have known David and his in the half family for many, many years and David, you will be a positive addition to this commission. when it comes before the full board on recommendation from the committee you got my support and thank you so much for your support for your service through for this to the city over the years and this is a wonderful addition thank you

▶ 17:42 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank You council thank you thank you mr. chairman good evening mr. mayor good evening mr. Hoff thank you both for being here mr. Hoff first I'd like to Thank you for your willingness to serve. This is obviously an important topic for the council and for the mayor. This is one of the mayor's first initiatives that he put forth as you know. So it's near and dear to all of our hearts. The one thing I would hope that you in the perspective other commissioners would consider is thinking broadly in terms of disability. We talked about the schools and what I would really encourage you and your future colleagues to think about is at the other end of the age spectrum, particularly our older adults with dementia. As you know, dementia is also classified as a disability because of the physical and mental impairment of those who suffer from it. it's an issue that's very important to me personally but I know with our aging senior population with the baby boomers you know aging out of the workforce we really need to be prepared for that and as a community ways in which we can find opportunities to maybe help families better identify signs of early dementia and how we can be responsive so I just say that to plant the seed in your early work to maybe start thinking about that I mean if you just I don't want to put on the spot on that particular topic, but if you had any thoughts or comments, I would certainly be open to hearing them. Thank you, Mr. Hoffman.

▶ 19:07 Speaker 3: Thank you, Councillor. Well, I would say a couple of things. First, I think disability is a very broad group of folks, and I've spent a significant – I mean, a major concentration of mine has been on folks with intellectual development disabilities, if not exclusively, and so sometimes we even get in these philosophical debates about how do you define disability, And there's a lot of different definitions, but I would absolutely agree that actually most of us in some course of our life, particularly as we age, disability becomes much more prevalent. And I think that part of it is, okay, figuring out, okay, how can Melrose provide the supports for those families, the resources, how can we make sure that, frankly, family members are able to stay in the community as long as possible. And it's obviously making sure that people have resources that are available to them. One thing that I've been struck by in my work with individuals and families, and echoes an earlier comment, is I often find that people are not aware of just the resources that are out there. There's often a lot of resources that people are not aware of. I also feel like sometimes there's this notion that the bureaucracy that parents have to go through sometimes, or family members that I deal with, or individuals themselves, is incredible. I mean, I know, I guess I speak for all of you, we always wonder how did these systems get so complicated so anything like that we can do in terms of providing user friendly information and serving you know information referral to you know individuals you know with family members with with dementia and other other similar conditions I think would certainly be a priority thank you mr.

▶ 20:49 Speaker 2: Hoff thank you mr. chairman seeing no one else wish to speak what is the will

▶ 20:59 Jack Eccles: of the committee motion to recommend passage made by Councillor McMaster seconded by Councillor

▶ 21:05 Speaker 1: Migliorelli Madam Clerk Vice Chair John Maladine yes Councillor McMaster yes Councillor McNaught yes Councillor Migliorelli yes President Grigoraitis I'm going to abstain from voting

▶ 21:21 Jen Grigoraitis: I have an abundance of caution because I have the distinct pleasure of working with Mr. Hoff's daughter in my day job, so I want to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. Thank you.

▶ 21:33 Speaker 1: Chairman Eccles? Yes. Five yes. Thank you, Mr. Hoff.