← Legal & Legislative Committee · 2025-02-10 · Legal & Legislative Committee Meeting
Public Comment
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▶ 1:08:42 Maya Jamaleddine: Uh, RO Gar Van Devin and President Mli Exofficio and non-voting members are, uh, counselor Hamilton, uh, counselor Karen. She, uh, and co counselor. Okay. And counselor. Um, MKI. Mki. Sorry. Uh, now, uh, this serves as not Suffolk Forum for the, the record in accordance with the open meeting law. This meeting is being recorded and broadcast live on MMTV. I will motion by unanimous consent to open the floor for public comment. Seeing no objection, we are, uh, open for public comment. This is the portion of the meeting where the public may speak on any item on the, uh, the agenda for tonight's. Um, and those comments expressing any viewpoints on other matters are also welcomed. Do we have anyone pushing? Go ahead. I should sit Or you can, yep, go ahead.
▶ 1:09:57 Maya Jamaleddine: Alright, thanks. Hi. Hi. Please say your name.
▶ 1:09:59 Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Uh, my name is, uh, Tim Cody. Uh, thank you, uh, to everybody for the chance to, to speak with you tonight. I wanna talk about the, uh, uh, proposed ordinance, uh, about, uh, snow removal. Um, uh, so my, my wife and I, uh, we live over on, uh, Argyle Street. Uh, we have three beautiful girls, uh, and the eldest one is nine years old, uh, and goes to the Hoover School and walks, uh, every day, uh, uphill both ways. I'm, I'm sure. Um, and, you know, of course one of the things I wanna make sure for her is that she is safe, uh, whenever she makes that, whenever she makes that walk. Um, and it sure enough, uh, whenever it snows, uh, there are always the same few houses, uh, that are not shoveling. Uh, and the unfortunate thing about it is not just that they're not shoveling, uh, but is that she's been injured as a result of this. In fact, just a, a couple weeks ago she fell, rolled her ankle, uh, had to miss dance, wasn't able to participate in school activities, uh, as a result of this. Uh, and I'll never forget the time a couple of years ago when I was walking her back from school, uh, I was pushing my then five month old daughter and her stroller, uh, walking with her again, hit one of these same houses. Uh, I slipped, thankfully, was able to retain control of the, uh, stroller. Uh, but my, my eldest fell, bruised her hip. Uh, and I think, you know, going down where we were from Hoover, it was down a hill street. You know, if I lost control of the stroller, my younger one would've, uh, headed straight down the hill. Um, so I can't advocate in the strongest terms enough, uh, uh, in favor, uh, of the ordinance. Um, you know, I, I was talking to my eldest daughter about it. She's, as I mentioned, she's nine years old, so she's very sort of cogent about these things. Uh, and, you know, she said, ah, it's really unfortunate that we even have to have this conversation. And I said, you know what? That's a really good point, that it, it is unfortunate. And I think the funny thing about it is, I walked into town this morning, uh, to go meet, uh, some work colleagues for coffee at Nero.
▶ 1:12:16 Speaker 4: And most of the way was perfect. Most folks do a great job after a snowstorm cleaning up,
▶ 1:12:22 Speaker 4: but it is those same houses over and over and over again.
▶ 1:12:25 Speaker 5: And when I tell my daughter about walking to school, I'm not gonna tell her, Hey, make sure you walk in the road to walk around those houses. 'cause folks are driving in their cars. Um, I want her to be safe on the sidewalk.
▶ 1:12:37 Speaker 4: Um, so not only should I, will I advocate on, on behalf of,
▶ 1:12:39 Speaker 5: of, of the ordinance itself that requiring folks to shovel, but I would strongly advocate, um, uh, for the portion of the, uh, ordinance, uh, resulting in fines. Uh, if you don't, I think, you know what, those folks,
▶ 1:12:55 Speaker 4: what I have seen over the few years
▶ 1:12:57 Speaker 5: that she's been at Hoover, she's in fourth grade now, uh, is that the friendly neighborhood pressure of everybody else around 'em shoveling hasn't made a difference. Uh, so unfortunately, it seems, again, in my words of my daughter, unfortunately, uh, it seems like that has to be, uh, uh, the way.
▶ 1:13:16 Speaker 4: Um, so that's what I have, I've come to say, uh, today in,
▶ 1:13:18 Speaker 5: in support of, uh, in support of the ordinance. And, um, anyway, thank you for the time to speak. I really appreciate it. And thank you for the work that you're doing. I really appreciate it.
▶ 1:13:28 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. And tell your daughter we're sorry that she had to Thanks. Deal with this. Um, anyone else wishing to speak in public comments?
▶ 1:13:43 Speaker 7: Hi, everybody. Hi, my name's Sean Curran. I live at one 30 Trenton Street. So I came tonight about the ADUs. And, uh, it was very interesting. But this summer I had, uh, one of my neighbors who has a three family and a unit in the back. Um, his plan was to, he dug a dry well, and then he had told me he was just gonna blacktop the whole property. And after I said to him, you can't do that, I said, we're in a residential neighborhood. I said, there's laws, right? So I came to City Hall, I went to the building department, and basically they kind of fluffed me off. And I said to them, he, the head of the building department said, um, we usually let people make their own plan for what they're gonna blacktop. And I said, that's not the thing. So I then had to hire an attorney at cost to me, and we finally got to the end of it. They made him get a drawing and a plan. And this summer he's going to, you know, re landscape and do the blacktop and everything, which I'm totally fine. It's his property. That's I believe in the law. But listening to the A DU thing, I thought it's in, it's important that, like you just mentioned, tracking and having people who, like, if I come to City Hall with a complaint, I shouldn't get fluffed off. I shouldn't get told. Like, you know, you are the pain, you are the, you are the complainer. 'cause that was the term that I got called, I got called the complainer. I've been here since 97, pay my taxes, you know, never, never missed a payment. And I'm not a complainer. I believe in the law. I grew up with all police officers, and I'm just telling people like, you, you need to have a thing in place that allows people to track. And when a, when a citizen comes and says there's a problem, they shouldn't have to hire an attorney to deal with the problem, because I don't know if everybody here knows, but in the state of Massachusetts, you never get your attorney's fees back, right? So when the attorney asked me if I was going, willing to go forward, you know, I said to 'em, I have the money for it, I can go forward. But most people don't, you know, $500 an hour is a lot of money. So. Well, thank you very much.
▶ 1:16:29 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. I just wanna, um, make sure that everyone know that this is, um, and, and it's confusing today because we have, we had to recess from one meeting to another. This is the legal and legislative committee. So, um, uh, I welcome any comments, even if it's not, um, uh, you know, related to, to nice, uh, agenda. But, um, I would invite you to, um, to comment on the item that is on the agenda, uh, for tonight, which is the Snow Removal Ordinance. Um, anyone else wishing to speak?
▶ 1:17:06 Maya Jamaleddine: Do we have anyone online? Go ahead. We,
▶ 1:17:16 Speaker 9: Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Tom?
▶ 1:17:29 Speaker 9: Tom?
▶ 1:17:33 Speaker 10: Maybe we can't check the other person.
▶ 1:17:46 Speaker 9: Okay. He's saying he's speaking. I can't
▶ 1:17:49 Speaker 1: On,
▶ 1:17:55 Speaker 9: Sorry. He's saying he's speaking, but I can't hear him.
▶ 1:18:02 Speaker 9: Do you have your, uh, Oh, there you go. There you go.
▶ 1:18:04 Speaker 4: Okay. Great. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Um, thank, thank you for dealing with the technology issue for a moment. And thank you for, uh, hearing me and, uh, some of my friends who will be speaking after me. My name's Tom Foth. I live at 42 Sylvan Street, um, across from Pine Banks. Um, during the pandemic, I lost 105 pounds,
▶ 1:18:26 Speaker 4: and you're gonna kind of ask, well, why, what does this have to do with walking in snow?
▶ 1:18:33 Speaker 11: Well, part of the reason I lost 105 pounds is
▶ 1:18:34 Speaker 4: because I took up walking 40 to 60 minutes a day among other exercise. Um, I'm currently, uh, 60, 18 years old. Um, I've, I've lived in, uh, snow, uh, snowy countries where I've had responsibility to remove snow for 44 years. And this is the first municipality that I've lived in that didn't have an enforceable snow ordinance, snow removal ordinance. Um, let me, and, and I wanna follow up on what the other gentleman said with regards to his daughter, uh, walking in that, and I wanna say two other things, uh, in support of why this is important. First thing is, is my wife and I were out walking the other day, not after this most recent storm, but the one before that. And there were still places where people hadn't shoveled. And what was interesting was people still walked on the snow. And so what that, what happens then is the snow gets compressed and then, um, and liquified, partially liquified. And then at night it freezes. And now what happens is you actually have something, something more dangerous than loose snow to walk through. You have ice to walk on top of, and that's a, a bigger risk, uh, than even just walking in snow. So, let me, uh, point that out. Let me also point out that, I mean, I go to First Congregational Church. Uh, we have a youth group that goes and helps our parishioners do things like fall cleanup and stuff like that. Uh, I know there's other youth groups like that in church as well. And I know that there are some of our, uh, residents who are maybe too old and don't even know how to secure snow removal in that. My, my sense is, and, and it definitely wasn't the case in other municipalities I've lived in, where there's teams of people who will do it, uh, tis or that, or the elderly and stuff like that.
▶ 1:20:29 Speaker 4: Um, I, I really believe, uh, strong strongly in this ordinance, uh, that, and, and to make it enforceable, I think at best there should be, you know, one forgiveness. And then on the second citation, they should be fined. Um, I think $50 is appropriate because, you know, they could have just as easily spent that $50 on snow removal then. Uh, but this is really, really important to people like me. I mean, I'm elderly and I'm not elderly. People like me, when we walk, if we fall, we break things, and that's not a good thing for anybody. So, uh, thank you very much for considering this. Please remember what I said about the icing, and, uh, please remember what I said about, you know, helping the elderly get their snow removed. But I think that this is accomplishable. Thank you for your time.
▶ 1:21:21 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Okay.
▶ 1:21:27 Speaker 9: And then, uh, one another.
▶ 1:21:32 Speaker 9: Hi. I can go. Can you hear Me? Yep, we can hear you.
▶ 1:21:37 Speaker 5: I live on Sun six Linden Road.
▶ 1:21:42 Speaker 1: Um, I am super supportive of the snow ordinance that I really, really hope that it passes.
▶ 1:21:49 Speaker 1: Um, I agree with what, uh, Tom was just saying.
▶ 1:21:54 Speaker 1: doesn't have one that's like enforceable, that's on the books when a lot of cities around us do. Um, I have a couple kids, I walk them to school,
▶ 1:22:02 Speaker 3: and there's always the same houses that I think a couple
▶ 1:22:06 Speaker 1: of them are multi-family, so might be somebody who owns the property that doesn't live there.
▶ 1:22:11 Speaker 1: And this morning the same thing happened, and we have to walk the street. It's not safe. Cars are driving very fast, um, on some
▶ 1:22:19 Speaker 1: of these streets that were walking down because they're in a rush in the mornings. And it would just be great if the city could do something to
▶ 1:22:27 Speaker 11: try to make it safer for people of all ages
▶ 1:22:30 Speaker 1: and abilities to walk on the, on the street in the winter.
▶ 1:22:35 Speaker 1: Thank you all for considering these
▶ 1:22:41 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. You Thank you. Do we have anyone else that is,
▶ 1:22:44 Speaker 9: is Tom, is he Tom? Tom is coming back. He's saying he has one more comment.
▶ 1:22:50 Speaker 4: So one other thing that I wanted to point out is, is this, you know, and I know that this city is really, really busy removing snow on streets and stuff like that,
▶ 1:23:00 Speaker 4: but there are, there's plenty of times when the snow has not been removed in front of Wyoming, uh, cemetery. Um, which is worth considering. The other PO point is, is there are these places where there is these rock outgrowths. There's one on, on Sylvan Street across from the cemetery.
▶ 1:23:20 Speaker 4: There's another one on, um, Mount Vernon, which kind of seems like no man's land where there's no houses in that, but somebody's gotta own that property. And those areas don't get the snow removed either. Um, and so as we're thinking about, um, snow removal in that
▶ 1:23:38 Speaker 4: we we're gonna have to hold the city accountable, um, as well as property owners of areas where there's definitely, uh, sidewalks,
▶ 1:23:49 Speaker 4: but no houses in front of, um, because they're just as accountable as everybody else. So I just wanted to add that, uh, I forgot about
▶ 1:23:58 Speaker 4: that in my previous comments, but thanks for hearing me one last time.
▶ 1:24:02 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Um, does that concludes,
▶ 1:24:06 Speaker 9: Kara wants to ask, wants to speak one more time.
▶ 1:24:08 Maya Jamaleddine: That's okay. Please go ahead.
▶ 1:24:11 Speaker 11: Good evening. My name is Kara Oberg. I live at 11 Tappan Street. I wanna show my enthusiastic support for the updated snow removal ordinance as a small city with so many residents living in Melrose, due to its walkability factor as a school district that doesn't provide buses, and as a transit rich community with transit dependent individuals and families, it's imperative for us to have safe routes for our kids and neighbors to get to school friends, jobs and resources. Thank you.
▶ 1:24:38 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you so much. I appreciate your comments. And, um, do we have anyone else? Uh, we also received many emails from constituents. I would like to ask to attach it to, uh, all the emails to this order. Right?
▶ 1:24:54 Speaker 9: You wanted to read 'em all? Is that what you just said? Yep. Oh, I was
▶ 1:24:57 Maya Jamaleddine: Gonna say, so just attach yes. That we would not finish for tonight. Um, and now I would like to entertain a motion to, um, uh, recess and then motion To recess. Second, we have a motion to recess made by, um, councilor Repe, seconded by President Elli. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you.