Public Comment

Transcript (~31 min @ 7:48)

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▶ 7:45 Francis X. Wright Jr.: available on MMTV as well as on the city's website the agenda tonight has

▶ 8:07 Francis X. Wright Jr.: three items on it. We have a motion for public comment. So moved. Second. Seconded by Councilor Zwirko to open the floor for public comment. Seconded by President Forbes. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Do we have anyone in the audience tonight who would like to speak on any matter on the legal and legislative agenda this evening? Mr. Driscoll.

▶ 8:47 Speaker 4: Good evening. I'm here to speak on order 20, I just moved up the screen, but it's chapter 2040. So good evening. My name is Bob Driscoll. I am the chairman of the Maryland Veterans advisory board um in full disclosure i'm also a member of the massachusetts air national guard and prior the air force reserve i've had the honor to wear the uniform of the air force for the past going on my 35th year now for half of that time i've been an employee of the city of melrose

▶ 9:26 Speaker 4: to be able to support to serve as long as I have and to have the success that I have had takes the support of a family and also your employer I would not be a colonel select today without the support of both of my family and my employer

▶ 9:53 Speaker 4: just a little history on this the city has four current members three in the police and one in the fire that also wear the uniform i being the member of the fire in my going on 18 years as city employee i've never come before the board with this request we have a town hall meeting every year where we tell the veterans community what's going on at the state level. We have our state contingent there. We tell them what the board is doing, projects we're working on. But then we solicit feedback from members of our veterans community as to what they would like to see us work on. And this year the feedback was to work on Chapter 33, Section 59. Right now, Melrose has a policy that closely mirrors this Mass. General Law. Policy, though, can be changed tomorrow. So a policy, to me, tells me you support me today. An ordinance tells me you support me tomorrow and the day after. And you support my family also.

▶ 11:19 Speaker 4: So, speaking for myself and the other three members, much of the training we receive while we're away on military duty, we bring back to the city and it makes us more valuable employees. We have a junior lieutenant in the police department. a lieutenant in the army guard and he's also a leadership position in the in the police department so all this leadership training he's getting through the military he brings back to the Melrose Police Department and it makes him a better police officer a better sergeant a better supervisor we learn teamwork we learn resiliency there's a lot of things that we learn that we bring back to our

▶ 12:10 Speaker 4: jobs here in the city this was brought up in april we are bringing it forward now around that time you're all aware the city had other issues overrides and in other items that have directed the attention although i will point out it's never the wrong time to do

▶ 12:33 Speaker 4: the right thing the brave act was signed 2018 in August we have with us tonight Jim Keene who's our legislative liaison on the Veterans Advisory Board Jim put this motion forward to members of the council in a letter asking this to be

▶ 12:58 Speaker 4: brought forward so I'm looking and requesting support from from all of you we talk all the time about how special Murrow's is we talk about all the time how we lead the state supporting our veterans this is another would be another example of how we do that we would be walking the walk not just

▶ 13:28 Speaker 4: talking the talk so before I close I just want to read a quote that I saw from George Washington he said the willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war no matter how justified shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation so in closing I want to thank you for all each member of the council for their support you are always there when we have events you're always there when when we need help and I know in my heart of hearts you're not doing it because it's a politically correct thing to do I know you're doing it because it's the right thing to do so to all the outgoing counselors, Councilor Forbes, Councilor Boisselle, Councilor Boutrois, Councilor Twerko, Councilor Medeiros, Lemmerman, I thank you and of course Councilor Wright, I could not forget you and also Council Mortimer, I want to thank you all for the support you have given to the veterans in this community over the years and I I look forward to working with Councilors Trematozzi, Councilor McMaster, and Councilor Lipper-Garabedian, and the new board, Councilor McNaught, to continue making Meadows the number one place for veterans and members of our military. Thank you.

▶ 15:08 Speaker 5: I am Jim Keene. I'm a member of the Veterans Advisory Board, and I'm here to second the remarks of Bob Driscoll. But I'd just like to point out a few things to you. Since the advent of the all-volunteer military, there's been a real fear that there's a growing distance between the civilians, we, and our military. In other countries, the military stands as a separate class, separate and distinct from the people. And New England is the founding area of the citizen-soldier, the American citizen-soldier. these reservists and national guardsmen are in our community and that bridges that gap between the military and the civilians and that lessens that fear that the military will become a separate and distinct class from us that we are all part of this that these are our neighbors so in this way we ask that you support those men and women in the reserves and in the guard and keeping in mind the citizen-soldier concept of this region thank you my name is Brian Ladner

▶ 16:31 Speaker 6: I'm Colonel Driscoll he promoted me and also demoted me in one sentence I'm he called me a lieutenant and a lieutenant I'm actually a sergeant on the Melrose police I serve as the officer in charge in the day shift I am number one on the lieutenant promotional exam though I can tell this audience that and then in the Army National Guard Melrose own nation's first the 102nd infantry I serve as a captain so that's where he he had me demoted there but that was a recent promotion so I'll give him a pass on that one I guess I just wanted to reiterate Colonel Driscoll's sentiment of appreciation I've done two tours in Iraq one in oh four and also in oh nine the first was for a civilian employer that was also very supportive uh 2008 i was hired here and i was subsequently uh deployed right out of the police academy which was very nerve-wracking it was uh you know a time i'm concerned about my my i had just switched careers i'm concerned about um my new employment and the leadership here the community was incredibly supportive and that's not something that is automatic or assumed

▶ 17:46 Speaker 6: in a municipality it's not assumed on the civilian side and it's it's not I think a lot of people just say oh well yeah you work for a city or yeah it's not like that I know people through my networking in the Army National Guard that they don't have it so good there's some of that I have it a little better but Melrose is always been incredibly supportive I guess beyond that showing expressing appreciation I just wanted to offer a takeaway when I'm briefing you know my battalion commander at the you know 182nd they want to know the so what what's the takeaway and I guess I wanted to give you the takeaway the purpose of

▶ 18:34 Speaker 6: the Guard has completely changed since I joined in 2000 when I was at Paris Island, this was pre-911, the reserves and guard were known as a support or a reinforcement. They didn't actually deploy forward. That changed very quickly in 911. When I was in Iraq in the Anbar Province in 2004 to 2005, the ratio to guard and reserve to active duty, there was more guard and reserve in Anbar Province in Fallujah than there were active duty. was about 51% to 49%. So just in that matter of a few short years, everything's changed.

▶ 19:18 Speaker 6: Going forward from Iraq and Afghanistan, which is a counterinsurgency effort, and I'm trying to give you the big picture here, at the general strategic level, the Army is now incorporating the Guard and Reserve into brigade combat teams so that we can be deployed at a moment's notice. our brigades are intertwined with active duty. It's no longer that we would be activated as a reserve or as a backup. It's we're basically in a regular rotation on a general scale. I don't know if that, I'm trying to make as much sense with that as possible. So I guess with that comes, and I could provide documentation upon request, over the past couple of years, It's basically our tempo has increased. One week a year, two weeks a year, one week in a month used to be enough and now it's not. It's just if we just show up to our very basic training without trying to do anything additional, we've essentially run out of the time allotted. It's not something that's guaranteed, it has to be given. But once again, it would be appreciated. And I just wanted to give you that larger picture. That's all I had.

▶ 20:33 Speaker 7: Thank you.

▶ 20:34 Speaker 6: Thank you.

▶ 20:50 Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Karen Welch. I had a 22-year career in the United States Army, both active and reserve. I'm a nurse. The Army trained me as a nurse practitioner. Right now, I cover five nursing homes. I juggle the care of at least 120 patients every week. My training in the Army is what allows me to be able to think on my feet, to work long hours and to do what I need to do. I will echo my colleagues. We learn how to think on your feet, you learn how to make decisions readily at the drop of a hat. I'm a Desert Storm veteran. So I, as a female, I left my family behind with my husband to take care of my two children. I did it knowingly. I did it willingly. Was it tough? Yeah, it was probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life. I'm now the commander of post 1506. As a reservist, I'm trying to work the same type of job I do now as a nurse practitioner and meet the requirements of being a nurse in the army reserve it was two weeks you know out of the year there was extra training to go back to school command and general staff school cast cube they're all leadership programs that we are required sometimes the timing for them doesn't fit into your two weeks of annual training we also do weekends some of them were muted fives which meant that that was a Friday in addition to my Saturday and Sunday my family supported me my employer in Missouri at the time when it came up for deployments they were like what are we gonna do because if I'm not there I'm not seeing patients so most of the time my two weeks of annual training was also my vacation time from my employer so that was something another sacrifice my particular family had to make as a chief nurse of a 220 bed army surgical hospital my biggest job was keeping my corpsmen my doctors and my nurses fully trained that meant all of our military training our annual training your skills assessments keeping them fully trained my corpsman on average where I was deploying corpsman after 9-11 during Afghanistan on an average of six months deployments I was every six months we were sending out a new group of my corpsman my docs are on three-month rotations so the docs instead of maybe having one six-month rotation every three or four years some of them were being deployed every year for three months they were surgeons they were ear nose and throat specialists they were internal medicine specialists they were cardiothoracic surgeons and so for them to be deployed for the three months in there three months as reservists when you're deployed your time starts when your boots are on the ground so that means your time starts when you get to your deployed location extra training preparedness for deployment you could be gone an extra month that's not your deployment time so that's another month that you sacrifice your family and you sacrifice time away from your job it's it's a big responsibility when I was on active duty sadly I would see the reservists would come through we go yeah here's the weekend warriors again look they're overweight yeah yeah yeah until i became a reservist myself and to be a reservist or in the national guard keep a full-time job keep a family and meet all of your responsibilities to wear the uniform it can be daunting but i'm proud and i would do it again thank you thank you anyone else would like to speak on any

▶ 25:34 Francis X. Wright Jr.: any matter on our agenda this evening.

▶ 25:46 Speaker 8: Good evening, my name is Trudy McDonald and I'm here to speak on the Sustainable Food Container and Packaging Ordinance. I'm a member of the Zero Waste Melrose Committee and several other members are here tonight as well. Last month I spoke on this and why I thought we needed this ordinance. Tonight I'd just like to reiterate that I and three other members of this group have spent a considerable amount of time and made a concerted effort to inform the business community and to get feedback from them as to what impact this ordinance would have on them. We've paid a visit to all the businesses in Melrose that we think might be impacted, and that's probably a little over 50 stores, shops, coffee shops, bakeries, restaurants, et cetera, including Shaw's. We spoke with the owners, the managers, the employees, and left them with written information about the risks, the environmental problems and risks. We left everyone with a pretty clear list of why we wanted this ordinance passed, and we also left them with a list of alternatives so that they have a way to find something to use instead of polystyrene. So a number of the merchants were already aware these concerns and some have already made the transition to alternative packaging most notably Dunkin Donuts within the last few weeks has replaced their styrofoam cups with something else so while some of the managers a few of them were concerned about the slight increase in cost for the alternatives the majority were really quite understanding when I met with the manager of Shaw's just last week John pyres he indicated that he was expecting an ordinance like this anytime because he was aware that Shaw's in other cities and towns have already made the transition in fact 40 cities as of this week have already transitioned just in Massachusetts and there's three states that have passed similar bans in Maine Vermont and Maryland anyway John told me that when he was a manager in Brookline five years ago he was they passed a ban similar to this so he's already been through this he seemed to have the experience and felt confident that a July 20 2020 start date would provide ample time for a seamless transition to accommodate the ordinance so in summary

▶ 28:30 Speaker 8: I just want to say that there's nothing there's nothing that we use for five minutes should threaten our health and pollute our environment for hundreds of years if we can just ban this polystyrene one of the worst single-use plastic items we use we will have taken a giant step and it's easily implemented a step towards a cleaner and a healthier city and planet thank you thank you so

▶ 29:08 Francis X. Wright Jr.: anyone else was any comment on any matter on our agenda this evening hi

▶ 29:19 Speaker 3: rebecca into bartolo 33 will then to have um i just wanted to thank everyone for their taking the time to consider this the ordinance on polystyrene everyone who's taken the time to meet with us and reached out to us with the questions and concerns um it's definitely been something that we've worked hard on we've met with i've met with the school several times we've met with all the businesses i think it's um it's been a lot of foundation put in place and people have been given plenty of time to look at alternatives there's plenty of alternatives out there that are about the same uh in terms of cost so i think it's really the right thing to do in terms of our environmental impact so thank you for your time and your consideration

▶ 30:11 Speaker 3: thank you good evening karen burke the veteran service officer for the city of melrose and i just wanted to speak briefly on chapter 33 section 59 that's on the agenda for tonight I, as a veteran surface officer, in support of this being adopted as an ordinance here in Melrose. I know currently we have a policy that has been released from human resources that supports this legislation, but I think by taking the extra step and adopting it as an ordinance helps to show the veterans in our communities that we put veterans high up on our priority list of taking care of them. What can be awfully stressful time, not only the commitment of deployments, but the burden of training to maintain their efficiency as the warfighter for what they do and if that's one less burden that you have to worry about with how you're going to be able to go and do that training

▶ 31:04 Speaker 3: and not have to worry about where you're going to find your time off from work in order to do that that makes a big difference for our warfighters so i think showing our veterans that we support this adopt this and make it an ordinance here in melrose it does takes a big step towards that

▶ 31:46 Speaker 2: support thank you hi I'm here to support non-veterans and people that provide a

▶ 31:55 Speaker 2: service and that their hours are very important to a lot of people in the town and that I don't think that they should be penalized for any of it I guess that's

▶ 32:14 Speaker 2: all I have to say but everybody that provides a service in this town does a good job the policemen the firemen especially thank you thank you good

▶ 32:39 Speaker 4: evening my name is Jim Wilson I'm both a member of the zero waste committee and and I'm also a retired chemist and I'm here to speak on support of the sustainable food container ordinance and in my mind there's really two reasons that you would you would consider trying to put an ordinance against the use of polystyrene with food and the first is that quite frankly we have no ways to read to recycle this type of material that if you if you allow sales of polystyrene to insulate TVs like Gray's might produce when you get your TV, there are some institutions in Massachusetts that will compress that material and make a good material out of it. But no institution in the United States will accept any kind of polystyrene that's been in contact with food. So number one, we have a problem with anything that's been contaminated with food. We just can't get it recycled, JRM will not pick it up. And number two, I think without trying to overemphasize the chemical impact, to be honest, polystyrene is made up of building blocks of carcinogenic materials, styrene. So what you have is you have a material, polystyrene, which itself isn't all that toxic. What's toxic from polystyrene is when you have broken up components of polystyrene, which is the styrene molecule. And whenever you make polystyrene there are some residual molecules of styrene in it as well as when you break it down you can get more styrene and it is carcinogenic. Now I don't think anybody knows exactly what the exposure would be if you have a cup of coffee that's been in a styrene cup and what the age would be before you are drinking that that you would develop some sort of carcinogenic exposure to it. But we know that it isn't something that you want to ingest and when the easiest way to get the styrene out of the polystyrene is to subject it to heat and then subject it to a food that can extract that styrene molecule. So that's where the danger is. So when people are using a cup of coffee because it insulates the coffee and keeps it warm, they have the chance of getting some styrene molecules from the cup and it actually doesn't add anything good to the taste I think most of us know styrene does not impart a good taste but we're using styrene plates in our schools we're putting food on it we're probably sometimes putting hot pizza and hot food on the styrene plates that we're using in the schools and there are other ways particularly people are taking packaged meat and that's on styrene and they're putting it in their microwave so it's that kind of exposure that we're concerned about and the easiest way to deal with this is to eliminate that as a container for food that we think is sellable in the city of Melrose thank you hi everybody I'm Dana

▶ 36:02 Speaker 8: Weber Wilson and I'm not a retired chemist however from my perspective whenever you want to give have an ordinance or require people in the population to change behavior we've heard that businesses don't really object to the you know to the change that they can deal with it what I where I come from is talking with people who are friends or acquaintances and how they feel about things I have friends who are somewhat attached to hanging on to being able to use plastic straws I have friends who are like oh I really like the plastic single-use plastic water bottles because of convenience I have never heard from anybody that I know that they want their styrofoam so So in terms of objection to an ordinance like that, I think you've got the population on your side. Thank you.

▶ 37:13 Speaker 9: Thank you.

▶ 37:23 Speaker 6: Anyone else have a... Karen Schweiss.

▶ 37:27 Speaker 8: I'm also a member of Zero Waste Melrose and I'm not going to repeat what you've already heard. I just think that this is a very welcome thing to the community. I again canvassed the community with other members and everybody, most people were on board i won't say everybody was on board but i think that the the health issues and the environmental issues that polystyrene styrene brings to our community is unnecessary there are alternatives and i really hope you will support this movement thank you thank you

▶ 38:14 Speaker 1: Thank you. Motion to close. Public comment?

▶ 38:16 Speaker 6: Mr. Chair?

▶ 38:16 Speaker 5: Motion to close.

▶ 38:18 Speaker 6: Public comment? Second.

▶ 38:25 Francis X. Wright Jr.: Public comment? Aye. The comment is closed.