ORDER-2022-69 : Permanent consolidation of polling locations to the Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School Gymnasium Complex for all City of Melrose elections. (Item # 9605)

Transcript (~20 min @ 3:42)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 3:10 Jen Grigoraitis: at the middle school thank you mr hoff for being here tonight and for your service to your community do we have anyone from the webex wishing to speak in public comment there's no one online at this time all right at this time i will motion by unanimous consent to close public common okay seeing no objection public comment is now closed we have one order on our agenda for tonight order 2022-69 permanent consolidation of polling locations to the melrose veterans memorial middle school gymnasium complex for all city of melrose elections item number 9605 and so that we can have a discussion there's no one coming before us tonight so i would entertain

▶ 3:48 Christopher Cinella: a motion president snell um at this time i mean i would motion for ought to pass second

▶ 3:53 Jen Grigoraitis: so we have a motion recommendation for passage made by president snella seconded by vice chair Migliorelli is there any discussion on this motion president snell um yeah i mean just to kind of

▶ 4:08 Christopher Cinella: clarify some of my comments made in the past and this has been out in the public domain since february now at this point since then i still haven't received any negative feedback still positive my initial intention i know that we've had some correspondence on this around um people wandering the halls and the schools um you know that wasn't my intention for the order we had i had some complaints from folks i know some counselors have had um complaints uh arising from parents with concerns of that nature there's nothing reported that i know of on file at the police station from any incidents happening so um it was not my intention for this disorder accessibility was and it was because i went on the tour with chair Grigoraitis back in april of last year and it's an issue in in two of our buildings and if we were to try to move winthrop to memorial hall memorial hall also has issues so the middle school is the only accessible place that can handle a large flow of residents with mail-in voting though i believe that that will be reduced um and like i said in the last meeting that that is uh something that's you know should be signed by the governor um also you know keep in mind too timing is an issue with this with this order because we do have to get a mailer out to our vendor on polling locations for may to be mailed out in june so we have a september election coming up so something has to be done you know tonight in my mind thank you thank you president smile counselor karm chady

▶ 5:48 Manjula Karamcheti: um well first i wanted to uh take the opportunity to thank miss foote for gathering all of the relevant information um particularly for those of us who were new counselors and entering into this conversation a little later than counselors who have already been at the table it was just really helpful and i really was hesitant to vote on anything without having the information the data and the conversations so i really appreciated the opportunity to have that and i think to me what has the thing that matters most is really the integrity of our elections and i have had time to review the reports to understand the accessibility issues thank you again for being here um mr hoff and the issues at our locations i've been able to talk to constituents consult with members of our aging population in melrose and also talk to citizens who are generally considered historically marginalized who live in melrose given those conversations and actually some research that i've been doing some reading on my own in terms of how consolidating voting actually increases the integrity of elections it eliminates the what happens sometimes when people vote at the wrong sites their ballots are thrown out so by consolidating it actually gives us gives people a better opportunity to make sure they go to the right place and that their votes are counted um and given we are at melrose we are doing some rezoning of places for where our residents will vote i think that will actually reduce confusion if everybody votes at the same place um and i would say i know there have been conversations about making sure that people can get to the polls so i would love to see a commitment on the city's side and our community to make sure that those have difficulty getting to the polls um have that support and i think that's something we can do as a city of volunteers um so i'm definitely now feeling more comfortable taking this vote i feel like i've had the conversations and information that i need

▶ 8:11 Mark Garipay: thank you councillor Garipay thank you um you know my my stance on this order has um hasn't changed my concerns i've said numerous times is the parking the size of the parking the hill for not just we i think we have an adequate amount of parking for people with disabilities i do worry that for seniors walking up from the high school parking lot that's that's a pretty long gradual climb and it's a busy it's a busy area um the amount of uh the amount of people that are going to be voting we haven't experienced an election that has not been as a result of the pandemic it's uh it's been low turnout lower turnout it's been more mail and voting i i think people are going to exercise their right to vote in person when they feel comfortable to do so and i question whether we're going to have enough space at that facility this this order was brought up these issues were brought up with these locations about two years ago and in at that time we had asked to look at solutions no one's brought any any solutions for any of these polling locations to see if there's stuff that we could do we haven't seen any any dollar amount any temporary ramps so at this time I'm still I'm still not gonna

▶ 9:41 Robb Stewart: uh support this order thank you counselor stewart thank you madam chair when i voted for the temporary uh polling location to be centralized i thought it was important given uh some of the concerns around covid and the plan that they had for mailing but in looking at making this permanent Permanency has, I think, a long-lasting effect and particularly for my ward, as I had indicated before, I'm very concerned about the residents that are in the two elderly housing areas that are right next to the Beebe School. As far as I can tell, when looking at all of the information in the package that Ms. foot uh so um nicely provided to us i didn't see anything that indicated that the bb school was out of compliance and please correct me if i'm wrong but i believe that a beat the bb school is in compliance when it comes to voting and what i don't understand is why it's an all or nothing and why there can't be a compromise on this. So with that in mind, I do not want to support a permanent consolidation. I think that there's going to be ramifications that we may not anticipate from a larger silent majority in this community, and I think that there's an opportunity for us to look at potentially finding a compromise but without Beebe's school I can't support this Thank You manager

▶ 11:20 Speaker 2: councillor Bremsky I'm still not in favor of this I don't see the reasoning in closing down polling locations that are accessible like I get the idea if it's not accessible changing the polling location temporarily until we make it accessible or fund those areas in order to make them accessible but i i can't fathom why we would close polling locations in this community it just doesn't make sense to me like not giving people an easier accessibility to vote that's why i'm against this counselor jamal dean and then

▶ 12:01 Maya Jamaleddine: Councillor Williams. Thank you. We just heard from one of the most vocal and advocate in Meadows speaking about accessibility and disability. I totally believe that this his statement only would make you know like make it's a big proof why we should consolidate polling locations. I also speak as a immigrant and English is my second language. I feel having consolidating the locations will avoid a lot of confusion for non-English speakers so those are are two major reasons why we should do it. So I'm definitely in support, thank you.

▶ 12:59 Speaker 3: Thank you, Councilor Williams.

▶ 13:03 Ryan Williams: I have a really hard time with this. I can see both sides of this discussion, and I think people have good points on both sides of it, but I struggle to connect some of the reasons with the outcomes. I agree that we need to have our voting accessible in as many languages as possible i don't agree that the solution to doing that is to close six of our polls i agree that accessibility is a high priority and that we should be focusing on making every polling location as accessible as possible but i don't understand why the solution to that would be closing six of the polls um i in these kind of votes i always imagine that i'll i'll you know i think to myself what am i gonna what am i gonna say and i i fall back on my ward and on the people that i represent and for us consolidating the polling locations is a more dramatic difference than it might appear at first because if you look at this map which is a walking map of 15 to 20 minutes actually i did 25 minutes walking from the polls what you see is that all of ward seven is outside of the walking distance for this location and i know that not everybody walks to the polls but the point is that we're creating car dependency by consolidating to the middle school it's very convenient for folks who live in the north half of melrose it's less convenient for folks who live in the southern half of melrose and it is not at all convenient for people who live in some of the lowest income areas of the city like on the malden border where i represent and live myself and over to the to the west where counselor mcmaster represents um i want to see a solution that checks all of these boxes you know i want to see something that that builds the accessibility up that builds the both in language and in physical access for people with different abilities um but i don't want that to come at the expense of of removing all of these different polling locations and so i i can't support this um and i want to support something

▶ 15:21 Jack Eccles: but this isn't it counselor eckles thank you madam chair um i've spoken on this a few times before and my position hasn't changed and i'd like to just flag a concern which is that a no vote right now brings us back to still having a problem with just having two polling places being inaccessible So as we kind of talk about a solution and talk about, you know, possibly voting this down tonight, we do revert back to that state, which to me is not acceptable. I think to most of us isn't. So, you know, I understand that there's a permanency associated with this, but there's also urgency of the fact that there's an election in September and a no vote tonight brings us back to two inaccessible polling places. So if there's solutions, they need to come in the very near term, and we need to start talking about them. but I haven't heard anything proposed that's an alternative to what we're

▶ 16:16 Jen Grigoraitis: voting on tonight so I'm still in favor thank you I would just add a couple things since one of six to does vote at the Winthrop school which has been deemed inaccessible for us to fail to pass this tonight means that we have residents who we need the Secretary of State's office to tell us whether or not whatever solutions the city can come up with will meet compliance so whatever happens here still has to go before the elections office and we have 1,400 households that were re-precincted under the due to the census and none of those households have been formally notified of their new wards I looked at the 28 pages of streets that were re-precincted the majority of them are five moving into seven seven moving into six two moving into four that's a change for 1,400 households of where they're going to vote I believe there are also approximately 2,000 voters who have joined our voter roll since our last in person quote-unquote normal election in March of 2020 those folks only know the middle school is an option and I do feel like we've had some conflation of accessibility and walkability and while I think those two things are important one is a legal obligation that we have under the ADA and one is not and I think not everyone can walk and I really want to talk about how do we ensure that the folks who cannot walk are able to vote which they cannot do right now at the Winthrop School and I think also at Steelhouse so my opinion remains unchanged I'm also very concerned about if we don't take action I think we're kicking the can down the road and are gonna have some really serious consequences and I also think the excessive the ADA study that's happening is also going to bring all of this back up because I think many of these buildings are going to be deemed in need of significant and costly renovations to

▶ 17:59 Speaker 3: compliant is there anyone else before i call the role council williams um raise a lot of good

▶ 18:16 Ryan Williams: points thanks you know i have to ask how we've gone for two years since this discovery was made and the solution that we have landed on is that this council has to decide what happens to the polling locations only because we don't know what the city will do or can do we don't know whether the the administration or the or the people that are involved in the polls can fix it or have tried to fix it we only know that no one else has come up with a better idea and it feels super uncomfortable to be sitting in this room with this limited number of people making a decision like this only because like nobody else is willing to make it you know i mean it's you know it's it's it's just it's very challenging uh to be to be in this position to to have to decide between two kind of poor outcomes um and it's frustrating that that we haven't had this conversation for the two years of lockdown pandemic isolation that we all had to not we as the council but we as a community didn't have this conversation immediately after the

▶ 19:21 Speaker 4: deficiencies were discovered and come up with a solution that's charming did you have your hand

▶ 19:27 Leila Migliorelli: thank you yes thank you madam chair um i think just to um through the chair talk address uh counselor williams um concerns about why we haven't come up with another plan i think the we is the council and the we there are obviously some of us myself included who agree with this consolidation of polling and think that it's a at the middle school is a the viable solution it's worked over the last um two years we haven't had anyone complain about the you know voting there in fact we have emails on record but people who say who actually worked the polls and worked them in the other schools um the other locate polling locations some of them being schools and saying that the consolidated way is is better and has been better um i think that we have some real concerns about having these polling locations in our schools not so much about the safety concerns but the disruption to the schools themselves so schools like the winthrop and the horse man they eat lunch um and have gym indoor gym inside their the all-purpose rooms which is where voting uh is located that may happen again with the bb school if the bb school comes online as a school um you may have those same concerns as well it's not right now but it may very well be in the future um so i think that as counselor echoes also pointed out um we've got we're on a time crunch so if this fails tonight someone else around this horseshoe is going to have to come up with another plan that plan will have to then be proposed it'll take three meetings to go through and then it will have to go to the secretary of state's office to be approved something different so we don't really we're not really voting between closing polling locations and just going back to the way it was we actually have to start the whole process all over again um so given that i see the concerns and i think i agree that it's you know is the middle school the ideal location maybe not wouldn't it be lovely if you know memorial hall was just ready to go or whatever um it's it's the best that we have right now and we don't have strong opposition against it um i think that you know my personal experience which i mentioned last time in march 2020 the last time we had an in-person um election there was chaos it was huge chaos we had talk about disenfranchisement there were voters who were being turned away from the winthrop school and their horse man because um the roles weren't correct and you had bad communication between the polling locations and the elections office and which resulted in people being turned away i personally was standing at the polls for a while after not getting to my my day job to make sure that people knew to come back and vote again um so i think there is considering that considering that we've already had some disenfranchisement and some errors um not to say that that would necessarily happen again but we have a process that works so might as well go with that given the time constraints that we have if someone has another idea that can be implemented and and figure it out in the time that we have i'm on board for listening to what that is but we've had this since on our docket since february no one's come up with anything and this these this is the group that would have to come up with something so um i'm once again voting in favor

▶ 22:48 Jen Grigoraitis: of this okay um this isn't doesn't require roll call vote but i will request that we do a roll given the oh i'm sorry did you just point information um was there a second to president Yes. Vice Chair Migliorelli. Thank you. Mr. Clerk, can you please call the roll? Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Counselor McMaster? No. Counselor Eccles? Yes. Counselor Garipay? No. Counselor Jamaleddine? Yes. Counselor Stewart? No. Counselor Karamchadi? Yes. Counselor Abramski? No. Counselor Williams? No.

▶ 23:52 Speaker 3: President Sinella? Yes. Chair Grigoraitis? Yes. Motion passes six yes, four no. Six yes, five no.