Department​ Presenter​ 165 Liquor Commission 540 Beebe Estate 2750 Beebe Estate Revolving Account 542 Commission on Women 544 Human Rights Commission 545 Commission on Disability

Transcript (~49 min @ 3:48)

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▶ 3:38 Devin Romanul: Very thank you, Councilor Williams. All right. Up first, we have department number 165, and we have the Liquor Commission. I believe we're joined by Mr. Joe Nevin.

▶ 3:49 Speaker 1: Thank you, sir. Good evening. Good evening.

▶ 3:56 Speaker 3: Thank you all. Joe Nevin, 415 East Foster Street. Let's see. Just the summary of the past year, and what we're thinking about for next year worth us coming here. So, it was a solid year. We have 21 licenses out there. There are 12 restaurants, three retail licenses, one farmer brewer, and five private clubs. And of the restaurants, there are three wine and malt beverage, and nine full alcohol. Let's see. This past year, we brought in our new restaurants were Bangkok Thai, Table 4, Big Fin Poke, and in retail, Franklin Market. We have the farmers market, multiple one-day permits, and multiple events. One-day permits, we issue about 25 to 40. That's a pretty wide range, but nobody counted it today this time. But it's usually about two a month that we have. And we had one commissioner depart, Commissioner Kevin Cronin. And which we really enjoyed his service and thank him for that. And we added one new commissioner, thank you for your approvals, with Diane Casey. Our priorities for the coming year are to review the current Liquor Licensing Commission general rules and regulations and evaluate what changes could be made to them, and then set up a plan for that. And then also review the current fees in the surrounding communities. And then just the license renewals, and my understanding, there's going to be a website update as well. So, that's all I have. The budget's more than adequate given our spending patterns. But you never know. If there's a compliance effort this year, then we'll use some of those funds.

▶ 6:07 Devin Romanul: Terrific. All right. Up first, I have Councilor Williams.

▶ 6:10 Ryan Williams: Thank you. I wanted to say thank you for the Liquor Commission and all the work that you guys have done. Some folks don't understand how much of a shift we've had in Melrose with regard to alcohol sales and events that allow alcohol, and there was a lot of public discussion around this, and over the last 10 years, we've added so much to the city, and it's been done in such a thoughtful way, that none of the fears that people had when we started to talk about this expansion have come to pass. Instead, we're all just having a great time. I have a new wine bar right down the street from my house- Mm ... that my wife and I go to all the time. And so I just wanted to say thanks for all the work that you do, and I'm very much looking forward to what you're thinking of for the year ahead. Thank you.

▶ 6:55 Devin Romanul: Councilor Finocchiaro.

▶ 6:57 Cal Finocchiaro: Thank you, Chair Romanul. Thank you for being here, and thanks for serving on the commission for so long. I just wanted to make a motion to move the bottom line.

▶ 7:05 Speaker 4: Second.

▶ 7:05 Devin Romanul: Councilor Finocchiaro made a motion to move to the bottom line, seconded by Councilor Williams. On discussion?

▶ 7:12 Devin Romanul: Seeing none. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 7:15 Speaker 2: Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? No. Councilor Karamcheti? Yes. Councilor Kowal? Yes. Councilor Abremski? Yes. Councilor Park? Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes. All in favor?

▶ 7:34 Devin Romanul: All right. All in favor. Thank you so much. That budget item will move to the bottom line. Thank you, Mr. Nevins. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Up next, we have department number 540, Beebe Estates. I believe we are joined by Mr... Oh, no, not Bill Butler. All right. Sorry about that.

▶ 7:50 Speaker 5: No. Bill Butler. Sorry.

▶ 7:52 Devin Romanul: No, it's all right. Trustee McKenna. Had my list in front of me. Thank you so much for joining me this evening.

▶ 7:57 Speaker 5: Sorry. I'm the treasurer of the board of trustees, and that's why I'm here tonight. Wonderful. The Beebe Estate has been humming along. This year we took care of a couple of things we needed to do, including a master lock and key system, getting that in place for safety purposes. We also took care of some exterior repainting that needed to happen. As part of that, we had the gutters cleaned, and we also realized that our gutters are in need of repair. Mm-hmm. So that's what we're planning, and looking ahead for the next two fiscal years. We have wood gutters on the building, and we're looking at if we want to retain them or consider some other options.

▶ 8:37 Devin Romanul: Wonderful. Thank you so much. Do any of my colleagues have questions?

▶ 8:42 Speaker 1: Councilor Park.

▶ 8:43 Speaker 6: Quick question. In the outline that you had submitted, it states that some of your priorities are, among other things, generate more awareness of the estate for private rental use via online marketing campaigns and special events. Can you elaborate on that and what you're hoping to achieve? What were some of the benchmarks you received last year, and what will you want to do next year?

▶ 9:07 Speaker 5: Sure. The event rentals since the pandemic have been sort of on the lower side, so one of the things we've been working on is trying to generate a little bit more awareness. One effort from that are the beer gardens that we've been working with Idle Hands to do at the Beebe, has brought a lot of people there, which has been nice, and that's been increasing awareness, which increases event rentals. And event rentals are what fund our revolving fund, which help fund bigger projects like our gutter work that we'll have to take along with some of the exterior painting and stuff like that. So one of the other things we did this year that I think we noted here was we updated our website. We worked with the Melrose Creative Alliance and had some assistance with that to make it a little bit more catchy, a little bit more functional. We're also talking about maybe some other special events we might undertake this coming year to explore ways to get people inside, maybe doing something during the Victorian Fair or Home for the Holidays to just make people a little bit more aware that this is a great event space that they can rent. We also, this past year, got some of those, I forget what you call them, basically the stand-up plugin AC units to help condition the air in the summer months. We do not have AC in the building, and so it does not make it a very popular rental space in the summer months. Mm-hmm. But that's helped a little bit.

▶ 10:45 Speaker 6: Thank you. I applaud those initiatives that you're undertaking. I think-

▶ 10:49 Speaker 5: This year, between events and the tenants in the building, we're up to about $15,000 that have come in this fiscal year so far.

▶ 11:02 Devin Romanul: Other colleagues? Councilor Finocchiaro.

▶ 11:04 Cal Finocchiaro: Sorry. I just want to make a motion to move the bottom line. Thank you for being here. Second.

▶ 11:09 Devin Romanul: Thank you. Councilor Finocchiaro made a motion to move to the bottom line, seconded by Vice Chair Vandiver. On discussion?

▶ 11:16 Speaker 1: Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 11:18 Speaker 2: Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Karamcheti? Yes. Councilor Kowal? Yes. Councilor Abremski? Yes. Councilor Park? Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes.

▶ 11:37 Devin Romanul: All in favor. All right. Wonderful. So that will move to the bottom line. Thank you so much, and actually, if you wouldn't mind sticking around for just a moment. Next up, we have item number 2750, the Beebe Estate revolving account. Okay. For your convenience, right back to back.

▶ 11:53 Speaker 5: Yeah. All right. So I spoke a little bit about that already, but the revolving account is what we use for our much larger capital needs. The city budget is what we use to cover utilities and also some smaller needs like that master lock and key system, and we did some interior painting this year as well that was covered by the city budget.

▶ 12:16 Devin Romanul: Wonderful. Do any colleagues have any questions?

▶ 12:21 Devin Romanul: Councilor Williams.

▶ 12:22 Ryan Williams: Thank you. I just wanted to note that the cap on the BB State revolving fund, which is in the agenda packet at the bottom in the table on revolving funds, the cap is $30,000 annually, and there are no salaries paid from this fund. And I'll make a motion to move the bottom line. Why not?

▶ 12:40 Devin Romanul: Second. Thank you. Councilor Williams made a motion to move to the bottom line, seconded by Councilor Finocchiaro. On discussion.

▶ 12:46 Kimberly Vandiver: Point of order. I just think it's a motion to approve for revolving accounts and

▶ 12:50 Speaker 1: not move- Is that correct?

▶ 12:51 Speaker 7: ... to the bottom line, but...

▶ 12:52 Speaker 1: Fair point.

▶ 12:55 Kimberly Vandiver: Just because this is the first time, not that it's- ... we approve either way. I just, you know.

▶ 13:00 Devin Romanul: Well, motion made to approve and/or move to the bottom line. Thank you very much. On discussion. Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 13:10 Speaker 2: Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Councilor Karamcheti? Yes. Councilor Kowal?

▶ 13:20 Speaker 8: Yes.

▶ 13:21 Speaker 2: Councilor Abremski? Yes. Councilor Park? Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes.

▶ 13:30 Devin Romanul: All in favor? All right. All in favor, then. Motion passes. Thank you so much for your time and efforts. City of Melrose, thanks you. Thank you. All right. Moving on. Next item on our agenda is department number 542, the Commission on Women.

▶ 13:50 Devin Romanul: Joining us this evening is Ms. Karen Grant, the chair.

▶ 13:54 Speaker 7: Hello, good evening. My name is Allie Bolberg. I am sitting in for Karen Grant, who is my fellow co-chair of the Commission on Women. She couldn't join us tonight, so I am here. Hello. Thank you. First, thank you to the chair and to all the councilors for your service to our city. I am very appreciative of all that you do and very appreciative to join you tonight to talk about the good work of the Melrose Commission on Women. So, as a reminder, the Melrose Commission on Women promotes opportunities, fosters equity and belonging, and provides the community with a vehicle for information, advocacy, and action on issues affecting all women. Over the course of this past fiscal year, the commission has been very actively meeting and discussing ways in which we can connect those in our community on such issues that impact women and girls. This past year in particular, we've decided to approach things through a lens of women's health and the various facets that encompass that. So we have held two successful group discussion opportunities, partnering with the residents at Melrose Station, which is nearby, so utilizing that great venue that also brings in residents who live there, and have had well-attended discussions to talk about women's health as it pertains to brain health, keeping your brains healthy, nutrition. And we're also currently in talks to partner with the Melrose Y in hosting a physical health related event in the coming months. And our goal is to get as many members of the community involved and aware, and we would be very appreciative of modest funds to help us support that, especially with being able to provide a little bit more when we're bringing together members of the community. We've been able this past year to, in light of the city's fiscal situation, operate without a budget and relying on the donated time and resources of our commission members. So would be very appreciative to continue to partner with the city and do what I believe is very meaningful work. Thank you.

▶ 16:21 Devin Romanul: Thank you so much. Really appreciate the information and to all of your efforts for the city of Melrose. Do we have any questions from Councilor Jamaleddine?

▶ 16:30 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Thank you for all the work that you've been doing for over the years, all the women who participated and stepped in. What is it exactly that you wish to accomplish with any amount of budgeted money that we would be able to provide or approve?

▶ 16:52 Speaker 7: Of course. Well, to share hopefully a lighthearted anecdote, in a past life, I worked in the Massachusetts State House, and it was always well known that if you were able to provide some light refreshments, at least you'd get a lot more foot traffic in the door to help bolster your issue or cause that you were working on. So mainly, such funds would go to being able to provide some small enticement for attendance slash also be able to explore other venues or places to be able to hold events. Right now, this past year, we found in particular we really needed to zero in on places that would be willing to donate space to us that didn't have any associated fee. So really, funds would be able to open up a few more doors, literally and figuratively, to be able to figure out ways in which we could reach a broader target of audience than we're currently able to.

▶ 17:59 Maya Jamaleddine: So you've mentioned about residents and- Mm-hmm ... which is specific population. Mm-hmm. What other population are you hoping to target, and in which interest specifically?

▶ 18:12 Speaker 7: Yeah. The goal ideally is all residents through Melrose. It's a commission focused on women and girls, but it isn't just women and girls. Itell the story of, I have two young children, six and four, and when I was pregnant with each, people would ask the inevitable question, "What are you having?" And I would promptly respond, "I'm having a feminist." And then people would seem surprised that I have two sons. And that shouldn't be the case, and I think that's exactly why we have a commission on women, not just here in Melrose, but that every community should. Because there's still some of this ingrained thinking that you can only be a woman and care about women. No, everyone here should care about the issues that are impacting women and girls, that in turn impact the way in which our fabric of society operate. So, long-winded way of saying I want the whole city to be my target audience. Mm-hmm.

▶ 19:13 Speaker 8: Thank you. Good answer.

▶ 19:14 Devin Romanul: Thanks so much. Up next, I have Councilor Williams.

▶ 19:17 Ryan Williams: Thank you. I just wanted to note that I'm happy to see that you're getting the mayor's request for this year is 2,500. 2025 was about 1,000, so it's more than double. I wanted to ask, I know it's sort of a tough question, to say what would you do with more, but what would you do with more if you had, say, $5,000? Have you thought ahead to what the greater need could be for funds for the commission?

▶ 19:44 Speaker 7: I'm very mindful that we are but one part of a large operating system here in the city, so I would never want to take more than what we need. Would be very appreciative of increased funds down the road that I think would be a conversation to have as we are able to take what we have and continue to scale. As I say, a lot of what we do is very simple, targeted right now because of the nature of what the commission is and the funds that we have historically had. But as I said, my goal would be to broaden the commission onto a level that's much more visible as some of the other services or boards of the city, and increased funds would certainly enable the opportunity to

▶ 20:45 Speaker 7: implement things that would allow us to have that visibility, I think.

▶ 20:54 Ryan Williams: Awesome. Thank you. I would like to make a motion to move department 542 to the bottom line. Second.

▶ 21:01 Devin Romanul: Motion made by Councilor Williams to move to the bottom line, seconded by Councilor Finocchiaro. On discussion, I have President Freeman.

▶ 21:08 Bradley Freeman: Thank you, and thank you, Allie. As a parent raising a daughter and a son, I want to thank you for your comment about raising two feminists. I think that's incredibly important. And just reading your memo here, I think some of the things that the Women's Commission is doing is wonderful. It seems like you're doing a lot of events with some of the more advanced generations in Melrose with your Alzheimer's event and things like that. I would love to see also some events targeting some of our younger Melrosians, and find a way to bring them in contact with some of the older residents of Melrose to share what they learned growing up and how this new generation is being raised differently, being raised to be stronger and more proud of their feminism. And I love the idea of the podcast interview series with MMRTV highlighting some of the women in Melrose. So, thank you for all that you do.

▶ 21:56 Speaker 9: So, no question, just more of a comment.

▶ 21:59 Devin Romanul: Terrific. Any other councilors on discussion? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 22:04 Speaker 2: Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Councilor Karamcheti? Yes. Councilor Kowal? Yes. Councilor Obremski? Yes. Councilor Park? Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes. All in favor? Motion passes.

▶ 22:25 Devin Romanul: All right, that motion passes. We will move to the bottom line. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you all. Appreciate it. All right. Moving right along. Up next, department number 544, the Human Rights Commission. My eyes and the tiny font are failing me on that screen, but I believe joining us virtually, Lizzie Barr and a couple of other folks. So feel free to introduce yourself.

▶ 22:46 Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, so I'm Josh Schorlich, I'm the new chair. Lizzie Barr is still listed on the website, but it happened three weeks ago, and here I am.

▶ 22:58 Speaker 9: And my name is Jay Stapp, and I'm the treasurer of the Human Rights Commission.

▶ 23:02 Speaker 3: Yeah. And this is a great time for this committee. There's a lot going on in the world in terms of human rights in this country, around the world. It's not like we don't have anything to do, so that's great, and that's why we're here. And thank you for having this committee, and we'll make the best we can of it and make Melrose a really great place. Yeah. And so I've been chair for a month, and I've been attending meetings, and Jay has been working on the committee for a couple of years, so he actually knows a little bit more about how we've done things in the past and how our expenses have flowed and where our bank accounts are and... But yeah. So, Jay, Stapp?

▶ 23:50 Speaker 9: So in this last year, we've focused a lot on sharing information with Melrose. So we distributed Know Your Rights red cards to help educate people on how to approach encounters with immigration or law enforcement. We've published three resource guides, one focused on legal and civil rights, one focused on resources for LGBTQ+ people, and one focused on immigrants and refugees. We've also been working on an intake process to review claims on discrimination, and we've provided some support for community events.Our priorities for this next year, we're looking to strengthen our role as a resource, increase knowledge of the commission. We want to increase the know your rights work that we've done. We want to distribute more resources, and we want to participate in trainings in partnership with the Massachusetts Attorney General's office. And we want to strengthen our engagement with the community. We want to continue partnering with community organizations and working with the Melrose Police Department and the Melrose Public School system. And from there, that's what I have for you.

▶ 25:14 Devin Romanul: Wonderful. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Councilor Jamaleddine.

▶ 25:17 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Thank you for being here tonight. And Lizzie, hi. It's so good to see you again. Do you have any vacancy right now? I know that this was an issue at some point.

▶ 25:33 Speaker 9: We do. I'm not sure of the current count. Do you know what- What was the question again? Our vacancy.

▶ 25:38 Speaker 3: We have seven right now. I think we can go up to nine. Mm-hmm.

▶ 25:44 Maya Jamaleddine: And so where do you post for people to be more involved and join the commission?

▶ 25:54 Speaker 9: Yeah. So we've been talking about this in the commission for many months. We've been reaching out to our local contacts within the Melrose community and doing all we can to connect and recruit. Lizzie, did you have something that you wanted to speak on with this?

▶ 26:11 Speaker 6: Sure.

▶ 26:12 Speaker 2: Jay is completely right. So we've been talking about this for a while. I would say our primary channels are social media, so our Facebook page is where we regularly post about it. So we've been trying to post things like, "If you're interested, come join us." And then we have postings on the city website as well. But anytime that anyone has an idea, we're also welcome to hear it.

▶ 26:35 Maya Jamaleddine: So the process is, is there an application, or do they usually just send an email

▶ 26:44 Speaker 8: for those interested?

▶ 26:46 Speaker 2: We typically ask that someone send their resume and a letter of intent to the human resources-- or excuse me, the Human Rights Commission inbox, which is humanrightskommission@cityofmelrose.org. And then the commission can review it, and then we send it on to the mayor's office.

▶ 27:05 Maya Jamaleddine: Awesome. Thank you. And for the year coming, what's your goal? What's your plan to accomplish? What's your

▶ 27:20 Maya Jamaleddine: plan, in a way, to be able to reach your goal?

▶ 27:25 Speaker 9: Yeah. So we want to partner on trainings. So we want to focus on getting more of those know your rights cards, distributing those, and having trainings available in our community for Melrose residents to know their rights. We also want to continue supporting community events. We get a lot of requests, and we'd like to be able to support the things that citizens of Melrose are requesting. And we requested a portion of our budget on outreach supplies and tools, which a portion of that, if the commission decides, would go towards- Mm-hmm ... focusing on these vacancies.

▶ 28:04 Maya Jamaleddine: And when you say events, what kind of events you're hoping to-

▶ 28:07 Speaker 9: The events that we've supported have been the Melrose, the MLK Day of Service, and the World Culture Fair at the Roosevelt School. Mm-hmm. Of course, any requests would be vetted by the commission. And so it would depend what the community brought forward to us.

▶ 28:25 Speaker 8: Awesome. Okay. Thank you.

▶ 28:27 Devin Romanul: Thank you. Up next, I believe I have Councilor Kowal.

▶ 28:29 Elizabeth Kowal: Other than-- Hi. It's nice to see you. Hello. Other than sort of the know your rights trainings and working with the organizations, are there other areas that you're interested in partnering with and working with, either whether it's the police or you mentioned the schools? Sort of just interested in-- I know that one's very important, but are there other areas that you're also looking to delve into?

▶ 28:54 Speaker 3: Yeah. The thing that's top of my list, and it's on the agenda for this next week, there's a group in town called Pathways to Restorative Communities, two women in Melrose. They're working with the mayor right now. There's going to be a meeting hopefully this week about the child who was killed by the falling tree over in the Winthrop School, and that sort of impacts our community a little bit. And getting those people from the Pathways to Restorative Communities involved with us, maybe partnering with us to bring together quorums and panels, and have people try and pull the community together. Some things that can happen in politics push people apart, and if we can bring people closer together from both sides or all three sides, and bring more consensus to the town, that's what we're really after.

▶ 29:54 Speaker 9: Yeah. Lizzie, can you speak more about the partnerships with the schools and the police?

▶ 29:59 Speaker 2: Yes. So the commission came together, and we made this matrix of our different community stakeholders. So we have commissioners who are doing outreach with the hospitals, with the schools, with police, and it's primarily gauged at how can we build bridges within the community, how can we build relationships as a commission, how can we build bridges so that the other agencies know us and trust us, how can they spread our name throughout the community, and also, how can we gain information so that we can then share information? So if we can learn their policies regarding if they allow certainOther agents of the federal government to be in their spaces. How can we know that policy so that we can then educate others? So it's really about relationship building and then also being a conduit for information.

▶ 30:52 Speaker 6: Thank you.

▶ 30:54 Devin Romanul: Terrific. Up next, I have Councilor Williams.

▶ 30:56 Ryan Williams: Thank you. The conversation with Councilor Cal was very helpful to me because it ties into the questions I was going to ask as well. So I'm going to cut my statement a little shorter. What would you say is the current status of some of this new policy work incorporating conversations with police in the school department and the hospital? Would you consider it very early stage? Is it something you've been working on for a couple of weeks or months? Is it more of an idea? Where do you guys feel like you're at with this?

▶ 31:23 Speaker 3: Right. Yeah. So I'm just coming into the whole team. This is an idea. Mm-hmm. I've been working on social justice for a long time, and I'm really excited. This is my next step here at Melrose. And, so I'm not just coming up with something that's half-baked. It's something that I've been developing for a while and I'm looking forward to doing that as much as we can across the community. I don't know the relationship with the chief of police, although he lives right across the street from my house. Oh . Good start. So that's convenient. Yeah.

▶ 32:10 Speaker 3: So what was the rest of the question?

▶ 32:12 Ryan Williams: Sure. And I have just a couple of follow-up thoughts, too. To say I greatly appreciate-- Sorry, I'm looking at Lizzie because she's on the screen in front of me, but you can't tell I'm looking at you. I greatly appreciate the red cards. Because this is the kind of thing where I think some of us as councilors, when we know these things need to happen, and sometimes we don't necessarily have the wherewithal to do them ourselves. And it's really great to know, for me, personally, anyway, it's great to know that it's being done. Because it's really important. So I'm really, really glad to see the commission doing these things and moving in this direction. I would say, when you're thinking about your policy initiatives, think also about surveillance. Because we have a little bit of surveillance in the city already, and I think it's something that needs to be examined and thought through and discussed in light of everything that you're talking about here in your points. And I'd be really interested to learn more about your goals and what you're trying to accomplish and follow along with you as you work through it.

▶ 33:13 Speaker 3: So surveillance in terms of cameras in schools and-

▶ 33:16 Ryan Williams: Surveillance writ large, but cameras would be a piece of it. Yeah.

▶ 33:20 Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.

▶ 33:21 Speaker 3: Yeah, and, having the reporting so that if the community sees something, they can report it easily, and not feel threatened by doing that. Yeah, it's really important to open all those channels so that everybody can respond to what they're feeling. Mm. And it doesn't turn into a bad situation. This tree is a great example. Something happened, and that can just go a number of ways. I'm glad to hear that Mayor Grigoris is bringing that together- Mm ... the community together around that so that people have a better understanding. And yeah, surveillance. The tree's a real outlier. But yeah. It's important.

▶ 34:00 Speaker 4: Thank you.

▶ 34:02 Devin Romanul: All right. Up next, I have Councilor Finocchiaro.

▶ 34:04 Cal Finocchiaro: Thank you. Thanks for being here tonight. Just wanted to ask you if you could go back to the-- You mentioned a cultural fair at the Roosevelt. Could you speak a little bit about that,

▶ 34:13 Speaker 9: or- Yeah. Lizzie, I think you know more about the partnership with that one specifically.

▶ 34:18 Speaker 2: Yes. So a parent reached out and asked if we could provide support to the Roosevelt World Culture Fair. So the MHRC has the ability to provide support, not with dollars, but with physical items that we can purchase. And we utilized our residual money from the donation account. So that was left over while we did not have a general administrative budget. So we purchased things like, they had these passport books, they had stamps, they had flags. And in doing that, we also dropped off things like our stickers and our magnets so that the community could become more aware of the HRC. That's great. I think the cultural fairs are great. We should do them at every school. Mm-hmm. If nobody else has any questions, I'm just going to make a motion to move to the bottom line. Second.

▶ 35:09 Devin Romanul: Motion moved to the bottom line made by Councilor Finocchiaro, seconded by Councilor Karamcheti. On discussion. Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 35:18 Speaker 2: Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Councilor Karamcheti? Yes. Councilor Cal? Yes. Councilor Abramsky? Yes. Councilor Park?

▶ 35:31 Speaker 6: Yes.

▶ 35:32 Speaker 2: Councilor Williams? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes. All in favor? Motion passes.

▶ 35:38 Devin Romanul: All right. All in favor. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. And last, but certainly not least on our department budget presentations this evening is department number 545, the Commission on Disability.

▶ 36:05 Speaker 6: Good evening. Good evening. I'm Gary Hale at 61 Pearl Street in Melrose. I'm the chair of the Commission on Disability. Our goal is to ensure that Melrose is fully inclusive of all people with disabilities. The tools we use are advocacy, education, and information. We're a group of seven volunteers. Four of us are people with disabilities. We have a parent who has a child with a disabilityAll of us have some work experience working with people with disabilities, and a couple of us have career-long experience working with people with disabilities. So we have a lot of expertise to offer to the residents in the community who have disabilities, and also to offer to the city when we have mutual concerns that affect people with disabilities. I know you have this information, but just quickly to mention some of the things that we accomplished this year. We worked with the Public Works department and our ADA coordinator to secure a Mass Office on Disability ADA Improvement Grant of $171,000. The money is targeted for accessibility improvements in three of our elementary schools, Hoover, Winthrop, and Horace Mann. And the work began over the April vacation and will continue when school's out. We developed a guide for community organizations, and I brought copies. I wanted to

▶ 38:01 Speaker 10: pass these out.

▶ 38:02 Speaker 6: Some of you may have these. Thanks.

▶ 38:08 Speaker 6: So these are for helping community organizations better welcome and include people with disabilities in their organization and in their events.

▶ 38:30 Speaker 6: One of the exciting initiatives that we just began this spring is working with the high school SPED department and the Chamber of Commerce to bring students with disabilities together with work opportunities, work experiences among our community businesses. We just started this initiative, and we have a lot of work to do on that, because I know there's a lot of interest, but the work of making the connections is what needs to happen, connecting students with disabilities with the right kind of work experiences in the community. So we're all in. We're all about continuing that next year. We also do a disability pride event for Disability Pride Month, which occurs in July. We did one last year. We'll do another one this year. I expect we'll do that annually. We have a few events down at the library, and a couple other things that we do. We brought in a resource to work with the city on website accessibility, and I believe that the cities that's size of Melrose have to be able to assure website accessibility by April of '27. So anything that we can do to help out with that, we will be there and assist as best we can. We also take on various advocacy issues in the city. We discuss strategies and ways of individuals dealing with any particular problems that they have. And if we have more of a community-wide kind of an issue, we'll take that on and deal with that as a commission with the appropriate entities in the city. So what we intend to do this coming year is we passed out this guide. We're distributing this guide among community organizations. But we're offering to provide education and support and other resources to those community organizations. So we expect that we'll get a few requests, and we'll follow up on those. We want to continue the school initiative. We'll do another Disability Pride Month event this year and continue to work with city departments on mutual issues. I'm certain that we'll submit another Mass Office on Disability grant application next year. I spoke briefly with Mayor Jen about that, and I think we're all in on that. And then we need to reach out to the disability community. We need to be better connected with them, and we'll be working on developing some strategies to better reach out to the community and make sure that they know that we're here. So our budget request is the mayor's request for us is $2,500, and we'll be very pleased to have those funds this year.

▶ 42:19 Devin Romanul: Thank you so much. Up first, I have Councilor Williams. Thank you.

▶ 42:22 Ryan Williams: Gary, you do a lot with $2,500, or I guess $1,400- Yeah ... because that's what it was before. And I think that I have seen you more than I have seen almost any other commission member of any commission in the city. You are everywhere, and you are always working, and you always seem to take on what must be-Sort of a daunting and maybe sometimes dispiriting task as a person with disabilities navigating a world that is not designed for them. And you do it with a lot of kindness and positivity and optimism, and I really appreciate that. So I wanted to say thank you to you and to every single individual member of the Commission on Disability for the excellent work that you've done for a very new commission. I wish that you could get more money, and I hope in the future that that's the case. But I just had to say how much I appreciate everything you guys do and what it's leading to around the city.

▶ 43:18 Speaker 6: Thank you. Yeah, you're very welcome.

▶ 43:20 Devin Romanul: All right. Thank you, Councilor Williams. Up next, I have Councilor Finocchiaro. Thank you.

▶ 43:24 Cal Finocchiaro: Thank you for being here and for everything that you're doing for the commission. Can you speak a little bit about the book? Is this something that you would like, you have hopes in getting out to the community and how? You might have said it, but I just want to get some clarification on it.

▶ 43:39 Speaker 6: There's a lot of information in here about disability in general, some information about disability law. But there's a lot of lists of things that community organizations can think about as they welcome people with disabilities into their organization, as they create events, plan events, plan for participants who might be people with disabilities. We have a section in here on reasonable accommodation, which hopefully demystifies reasonable accommodation just a little bit. I think probably it's a scary term a lot of times, and it really doesn't need to be because most reasonable accommodations are no cost or low cost. And we offer in here that if an organization has a cost item that has to do with making an event accessible to people with disabilities, that they can check with us, and we can help them find some resources. There are some funding resources that you can apply for if you have an expense, a large expense, to meet the reasonable accommodations of the individuals attending your event. So, it's a lot of information, and basically, a community organization can go through here and find the checklist that works for them. And plus, there's a lot of other information, some other resources identified in here also. So we've been working on this for a while, and we're in the process of getting it out. We had a meeting last night. We were just talking about how we can get this out to folks. So we're compiling a list of-- This is for community organizations as opposed to businesses because the ADA requirements vary somewhat, whether you're a nonprofit organization as opposed to whether you're a profit-making business. So this is for the nonprofits, basically. And we just compile a list and do our best to get it out to everybody.

▶ 46:03 Cal Finocchiaro: Yeah, I looked through it briefly while you were speaking. It's comprehensive. There's things in here that I personally wouldn't think of if I was holding an event, and I like that you give them resources for funding or just resources in general. So, I'd be interested in how you figure out how you're going to get it out into the community so people know. For instance, like at the BBS state, if people are having an event there, maybe you have the pamphlets there or something, so.

▶ 46:30 Speaker 6: Well, recently there was the cultural summit- Yeah ... a couple of weeks ago, and we attended that. And most of the folks there was an art community mostly, and they're mostly nonprofit entities. So we brought copies of this and left quite a few copies with them. But we really need to make sure, it's not a really good place to leave a pile of these things and make sure the right people get them. So we're going to, as I mentioned, compile a list of organizations, and if the best thing to do is to mail them, that's what we'll do. We want to make sure we get these out to as many of our community organizations as we can.

▶ 47:26 Cal Finocchiaro: Well, you're doing great work, and I'm happy that you have a larger budget. And I know you're going to do great things with every single cent. So just make a motion to move the bottom line.

▶ 47:36 Devin Romanul: Second. Motion to move to the bottom line, excuse me, by Councilor Finocchiaro, seconded by Councilor Karamcheti. On discussion, up first, I have Councilor Karamcheti.

▶ 47:47 Manjula Karamcheti: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here, Mr. Hale. I just wanted to just jump in and say that I just so greatly appreciate the work that the Commission on Disability has been doing, especially around supporting the city in getting funds to do some deeply important and meaningful work through grants, in terms of accessibility for our city. And I was at the Melrose Creative Alliance where you presented this, and those kinds of presentations, I think, have such an impact. I actually took this and brought it to my workplace, and shared it with our HR department in terms of we host a lot of events too, and thinking about how we can make our events more accessible. So I just want you to know the impact of this work is actually going beyond Melrose. And then I guess, can I ask a question when it's, yeah, discussion? Yeah, I can. I'm curious if organizations are looking for consultation, can they call the Commission on Disability? Can they get in touch? Or just in terms of the role that the commission wants to play in the city, what are your thoughts on that?

▶ 49:03 Speaker 6: Well, the best way to get in touch with us is to send us an email at cod@cityofmelrose.org, and we'll surely respond to that. And that's the best way. I have my mobile phone on when we put out the agenda notice that gets posted in the city hall, and it also goes on our webpage on the website. So, my phone number is there if organizations want to find that and call. But the best way is to email us, and we'll definitely follow up because that's what we offer and that's what we want to do. We want to make sure that people understand how to use this if they have any questions. We want to be able to be there to support them.

▶ 50:00 Speaker 5: Wonderful. Thank you so much.

▶ 50:02 Devin Romanul: Perfect. Thank you so much. I also have Vice Chair Vandiver.

▶ 50:05 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you. On the topic of this guide, which I also saw at the previous event, an amazing guide. Are you aware of any organizations or events that have already, in Melrose, made any adjustments based on the guide?

▶ 50:22 Speaker 6: Not specifically. That was a couple of weeks ago, and we haven't been contacted for follow-up on the guide, but we don't have that many out circulated yet. So, we could send it out on a Word document also. So we can email it out, but we wanted to spiff it up a little bit. So that's why we came up with this, and this is what we'd really like to get into people's hands. But we're available. We just started distributing this maybe two or three weeks ago, so it's early yet, but I hope organizations will let us know how we can-- I think the contact, there is, I believe, our email address in this document and also our webpage on the Melrose website.

▶ 51:30 Kimberly Vandiver: Well, we just talked to the BB Estate, so it looks like they've already left the room. But hopefully we can get them a copy as well for the events that they host and the art events and the beer gardens. I don't know which gaps they have, but I'm sure there are things they could improve. And I'm sure as you start to see these changes that do pop up at events around town, it'll probably be very rewarding for you and all of this work that you've done. So I'm looking forward to that. Thank you for everything.

▶ 51:58 Speaker 6: Absolutely. And I will follow up with BB Estate.

▶ 52:01 Devin Romanul: Thank you. Thank you, Chair Hale. And I'll just say to your comment about spiffing it up, for those who aren't in the chamber, this is exceptionally spiffy. So I think mission accomplished in that regard. And please let us know if there's a way we can help distribute this both to community organizations, but in our own social media online channels. Happy to do that when you have a PDF version ready for distribution. Any other councilors? I believe we have a motion on the floor and seconded. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 52:29 Speaker 2: Yes. Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Councilor Karamcheti? Yes. Councilor Cal?