ORDER-2017-12 : Petition to the Great and General Court to enact a Special Act to authorize the city of Melrose to amend the Melrose city charter to replace the term "Board of Aldermen" with "City Council" and replace the term "Alderman" with "Councilor"

Transcript (~9 min @ 16:17)

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▶ 15:34 Peter D. Mortimer: Is there a motion to open the floor for public participation, please? Second. Alderman Lemmerman has made a motion to open floor for public participation, duly seconded by Alderman Forbes. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, we're open for public participation. Seeing no one present, Alderman Zwerchel makes a motion to close public participation, duly seconded by Alderman Tramontozzi. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Public participation is now closed. This meeting is being broadcast on MMTV. It's on the city website for viewing in the future if anybody would like to review this meeting at a future time. We have two orders before us. The first order is a petition to the Great and General Court to enact a special act to authorize the City of Melrose to amend the Melrose City Charter. To replace the term Board of Aldermen with City Council and replace the term Alderman with Council. This is order 217-1217-12, Alderman Lemmerman please.

▶ 16:33 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Thank you very much Mr. Chairman and I appreciate the committee's indulgence in allowing me to speak on this. time now that it's before us I just do want to take a moment to clarify or

▶ 16:43 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: address the process proposed by this order a home rule petition is is completely legal and viable and recognized method for changing a charter the home rule amendment of the state constitution provides several routes for revising a charter but there are two that are considered to be main charter change routes and right on mass gov under the cities and town section of the DOR website they list what they quote most familiar they consider the most familiar and those are electing a home rule Charter Commission and petitioning the state legislature for a home rule petition which is the latter of which is is what this order would propose these were confirmed by in this committee by the city solicitor and in writing by both the house and Senate Council of the State House which I would be happy to share or even submit representative Broder and Senator Lewis are both very much aware of this order and both have said that they would take this up on the state level should it be the will of this board. And there is no mention from them of any concern about an undue burden being placed on the great and general court. And in fact, Newton did it this way just last year. And they passed it through the state legislature without incident and they are now operating as a city council with city councilors. Individual aldermen obviously may have an opinion on whether they want to do it this way, which is a discussion we should and certainly have started and can continue, but I just want to be very clear that it's 100% an appropriate and, in fact, standard route for making a change. I can't go further in my discussion of this without mentioning the other order on our agenda tonight, tonight and i hope for the chair's leniency a little bit on that but i promise i won't go too

▶ 18:35 Peter D. Mortimer: far down that road that that's fine especially since it's on the agenda later this evening thank

▶ 18:38 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: you um there are many substantive reasons to to have a charter review um absolutely and and i look forward to that discussion next um this is a symbolic change which was brought up during our last discussion it's not about policy or roles or the makeup of our city government it is about symbol and symbols matter and words matter and that was recognized by Newton last year it was recognized by several communities over the past decade other examples that we see on the national level was recognized by the military in June of this year when the Marines changed 19 of their titles to the gender neutral term recognizing that that was more appropriate for the makeup of the people who are serving in those roles so I see this as our opportunity to do this quickly and cleanly and appropriately and demonstrate that it matters to us how we choose to present ourselves to residents and while that symbolic that it does in fact matter and to take that decisive action as this board instead of passing it off to a hypothetical unnamed group that could potentially be in a multi-year process you know if the tables were turned and Alderwoman was

▶ 19:58 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: the classic term that was being used. I can promise you that I would not, if I can pick on my colleague here, I would not be sitting next to Alderwoman Tramontozzi, and that is not because he would have felt that he couldn't run because he's a man, which I know is something that we discussed whether women have been discarded from running, obviously they haven't been, but it would be because I guarantee you it would have been swiftly and decisively changed many years ago because it's silly, and I'm not sure why it's not silly that I'm an

▶ 20:27 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Alderman so I just again thanks everyone for the really thoughtful dialogue I think we've had some great discussion on it thanks to the residents who came down during our last meeting to speak took time out of their day that was in fact a major goal this order was to have more public to participation and we've had a lot of it here on this order I would also like to recognize the people who wrote in and took time out of their lives to write to us on this order and make sure that they're given at least the equal recognition to some of the less official testimony that was read into the record during our last meeting so I'd like to start if I made by making a motion that the following communications are attached to this order and IQ m2 and those are an email by Don Lehman, dated 8-15-16, an e-mail by Sam Hammer, dated 8-15-16, an e-mail by Bill Kramer, dated 8-22-16, an e-mail by Jen McAndrew, dated 8-24-16, and an e-mail by Sarah Waywell-Tim, which was dated 8-25-16.

▶ 21:32 Peter D. Mortimer: Alderman Leibman has made a motion to include the aforementioned letters, e-mails, into our record. Is there a second? seconded by Alderman Zwirko. Any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, those emails will be added to the record. Please proceed, Alderman Lemmon, you still have the floor.

▶ 21:53 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Thank you, and thank you for that. I would like to, at this time, given the discussion that we have had, we are not a full committee tonight, I would like to ask for this committee's consideration, and I will make an order, or a motion, I'm sorry, to move this order forward to the full board without recommendation.

▶ 22:16 Peter D. Mortimer: Alderman Lemmerman has made a motion to recommend that this board with no recommendation for any particular action. Second. To move it forward without recommendation. That motion was seconded by Alderman Medeiros, was that? Yes. Alderman Medeiros. On discussion.

▶ 22:38 Peter D. Mortimer: You're concluded, yes. Thank you. Alderman Zorico, please.

▶ 22:41 Michael P. Zwirko: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I also wanted to thank this board and Alderman Forbes for allowing me to submit comments when I was away, when this originally came up back, I believe on the 23rd of August. So it meant a lot to me and I appreciate that getting, having those comments read into the record. I also want to point out that there's a lot of hard work that was completed here by Alderman Lemmerman to get this. This wasn't just something that came out of the blue. put a lot of work and advocacy and well as research to get this order done as previously stated I do support the change there's one other thing and she alluded to the order that we'll be discussing next but this is a fully baked order so other than a vote that needs to be taken here by the board that work will be complete and we no longer have to do anything the next order requires a lot more work and we'll be taking on a lot more as we'll get into decision-making but this is done this is approved it goes to the court great in general court and they deal with it on their end and then it hopefully sure it will go through and the change will will be made so the decision here is to make a simple name change it's not a you know this the name as it exists alderman I'm very happy to be called an alderman I'll be happy to be called a counselor I've been called a lot worse so I think it's a it's a common-sense change it makes sense people understand what a counselor is it's a title that's contemporary and I just feel that there's we shouldn't have anything to derail this I would really like to see this order go through and with that I yield the floor thank

▶ 24:22 Peter D. Mortimer: you very much aldermen's work oh are there any other aldermen wishing to be heard before we call for the vote seeing none we have a motion to move this forward to the full board without recommendation do least by alderman lemmerman duly seconded by alderman's work oh all in favor please say aye any opposed hearing none this order will be sent to the full board without recommendation at our next full board meeting the next order we have before us is order two zero one seven dash two two it is an order invoking section nine of the Charter for the City of Melrose, calling on the Mayor and the President of the Board of Aldermen to establish a special committee to complete a periodic review of the Charter. This was sponsored by Alderman Zwirko. Alderman Zwirko, you have the floor.