Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2018-03-19
Attendance
Manisha Bewtra ; Robert A. Boisselle ; Scott M. Forbes ; Jennifer L. Lemmerman ; Kate Lipper-Garabedian ; Shawn M. MacMaster ; Monica C. Medeiros ; Peter D. Mortimer ; John N. Tramontozzi ; Francis X. Wright Jr. ; Michael P. Zwirko
Agenda
- Call to Order
- Public Participation
- Orders
- ORDER-2018-144 : A Resolution urging the President of the United States, the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives to act on gun control legislation.
- ORDER-2018-145 : Petition to the Great and General Court to enact a Special Act to further amend Section 3-10: Vacancy in Office of Mayor of the City Charter
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MARCH 19, 2018 Aldermanic Chamber, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:30 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 The public should take notice that the Melrose Board of Aldermen may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the Board of Aldermen consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Jennifer L. Lemmerman Chair Present Scott M. Forbes Vice Chair Present Peter D. Mortimer Ward 6 Alderman Present Robert A. Boisselle Ward 4 Alderman Present John N. Tramontozzi Ward 1 Alderman Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Ward 3 Alderman Present Monica C. Medeiros Alderman at Large Present Manisha Bewtra Alderman at Large Present Kate Lipper-Garabedian Alderman at Large Present Shawn M. MacMaster Ward 5 Alderman Present Michael P. Zwirko President/ Ex-officio Member Present
ORDER-2018-144 Resolution A Resolution urging the President of the United States, the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives to act on gun control legislation. Recommend as Amended Board of Aldermen
ORDER-2018-145 Home Rule Petition/Special Act Petition to the Great and General Court to enact a Special Act to further amend Section 3-10: Vacancy in Office of Mayor of the City Charter Hold City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 4/13/2018 10:25 AM
Transcript
▶ 0:00 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Good evening. The hour being 730 on Monday, March 19th, I call to order the Appropriations Committee of the Board of Aldermen. This meeting is being recorded in accordance with the open meeting law, and it is accessible on MMTV as well as on the City of Monroe's website. My name is Jennifer Limmerman. I'm the chair of the committee, and we are joined here this evening by Vice Chair Alderman Forks, as well as committee members Alderman Puccia, Alderman Boisselle, Alderman Lipper-Garabedian, Alderman McMaster, Alderman Medeiros, Alderman Mortimer, Alderman Tramontozzi, Alderman Wright, and President Swirko. Is there a motion to open the floor? So moved. Second. We have a motion to open the floor for public participation by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Boisselle. All in favor?
▶ 1:03 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Aye. Any opposed? the floor is now open for public participation this is the portion of our meeting where any member of the public can come forward to speak on any item on our agenda this evening motion to close public participation madam chair second we have a motion to close public participation by alderman mortimer uh seconded by alderman Boisselle all in favor aye any opposed public participation is now closed we have two items before us this evening We'll start with Order 2018-144, a resolution urging the President of the United States, the United States Senate, and the United States House of Representatives to act on gun control legislation. This is offered by Ward 3 Alderman Francis Wright, myself, and Jennifer Lemmerman.
▶ 1:49 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: I will read the language and open up the floor for comment from the committee. urging the President of the United States, the United States Senate, and the United States House of Representatives to act on gun control legislation, whereas federal elected officials have continually been unwilling or unable to pass reasonable gun legislation despite multiple mass shootings, killing school children and other individuals with assault weapons. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Board of Aldermen of Melrose, Massachusetts strongly urges the President of the United States, the United States Senate, and the United States House of Representatives to reinstitute the ban of the sale of assault weapons,
▶ 2:29 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: pass legislation banning the possession and or use of so-called bump stock devices, reinstitute reasonable restrictions on who may seek to purchase or otherwise obtain firearms, as well as reinstitute reasonable background checks on all individuals seeking to purchase firearms, otherwise obtain firearms, or to license firearms. Further, be it resolved that upon its passage the city clerk shall forward a copy of the above resolution to the President of the United States Donald Trump, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senator Edward Markey, and U.S. Representative Katherine Clark. Thank you Madam Chair. I'm not a great believer in this body passing
▶ 3:15 Francis X. Wright Jr.: resolutions on matters that we don't have control of as a city. However, this This is something that I saw as affecting our whole nation, and there was a time in this country not too long ago when we had reasonable restrictions in place, and those were removed within the last decade or so, and we've seen this increase in mass killings, whether it's in California, Texas, Colorado, most recently in Florida, of course in Connecticut, and not too long ago, right next door, when Mako McDermott took out his AK-47 and killed eight of his fellow employees up in Wakefield. I come from a family of hunters. My father was a hunter. We had a shotgun in the house. I don't hunt, but I have relatives who hunt.
▶ 4:20 Francis X. Wright Jr.: I have nothing against hunting. I have nothing against owning a weapon for protection when needed, but we have an issue in this country with people seeming to want and need to have military-style assault weapons. And I've yet to see one being used in a positive way But I certainly, I think we've all seen them being used time and time again to mow down innocent children and innocent individuals across this country. So for this reason, I'm putting this forward. I think the federal government is unable to move on this as it has proven to be paralyzed on a lot of different matters. and we see our school children now gathering to address this corporations now have stepped up and they're addressing this individual residents
▶ 5:31 Francis X. Wright Jr.: across this country I was up in New Hampshire this weekend and I saw people standing on a corner with signs on the Saturday afternoon and up in the cold just holding signs saying address the need for military style weapons so I think as community leaders this is our opportunity to just let our voices be heard saying let's do something reasonable let's sit please sit down please figure this out please Institute something we can all live with and don't Don't be driven by fear, don't be driven by the NRA, don't ignore what's going on. Please consider all those people who suffer as a result of these weapons being sold without any type of restriction. That's my thought. That was my goal along with Alderman Lemmerman in filing this and I hope that this body will
▶ 6:35 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: support it thank you alderman wright um i would like to take just a moment to also address my co-sponsorship of of this resolution um 115 000 americans are shot every year in this country and an american child is 17 times more likely to die from a gun from gun violence than and his or her peers in all other high-income countries combined. So by definition, gun violence in this country is an epidemic of a public health crisis. Nearly 60% of high schoolers in the country right now say that they fear that a shooting could happen in their school. So right here in Melrose, we know that there are students who are living with that fear. And we saw students standing up to join their peers around the country last week to say enough.
▶ 7:28 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: They were demanding that decision makers in this country hear them when they say that they need action, and when the weather in New England deterred that effort, they didn't let it stop them, and many of them went into Boston, and they brought their message to the State House. Despite the passionate efforts of members of the Massachusetts delegation and many of their peers in Congress, they have continually failed to pass reasonable protections that are supported by a majority of americans in this country and it's imperative that leaders at all levels speak up and demand more from them so i think our students are leading the way and through this resolution we have an opportunity to support them in that and to follow their lead
▶ 8:14 Scott M. Forbes: and i i hope that we can do that remember the committee who wish to motion for passage we have a motion to recommend for passage from alderman wright Second. Seconded by President Search. All in favor. Aye. Sorry. You can go ahead. Before I get out here and institute my vote, you know, I read this a bunch of times. I really don't want to get into a Second Amendment battle here in the horseshoe. think that we need to have reasonable gun legislation here in the country I think you see it on a federal level in the state level level and obviously we everyone is talking about it on a local level I do have a problem with the way the amendment is written I don't think we should reinstitute the ban of assault
▶ 9:12 Scott M. Forbes: weapons because that that assault ban was 20 years ago when it was written I believe is from 1993 to 2004 I think that we've come a long way since then There are many other versions of the AR-15 that's out there. There's a lot of high-capacity magazines that are out there. If they're going to be grandfathered in, which was in the original legislation, then we're still going to have a problem. I feel like that this amendment should probably say that we need to have or pass reasonable gun legislation regarding the sale of assault weapons and not reinstitute a 20-year-old piece of legislation. I think we need to come to the table with something new. We need to come to the table with something that's fair and balanced.
▶ 9:50 Scott M. Forbes: There's a lot of legal gun owners in this country. As a veteran of 22 years, I've been around weapons my entire life. My family owns weapons, my friend owns weapons, and they own weapons that are, you know, of the AR-15 variety, but they are legal gun owners and they're responsible. I know that that's a discussion that needs to be have, I'm willing to have that dialogue. I'm not saying that I'm against it, but I just feel like that for the sake of this resolution, I would feel more comfortable saying that we need to pass reasonable legislation regarding the sale of assault weapons, not initiating a ban of legislation that was written 20 years ago. Thank you. Thank you. On discussion, I have, first, I'm kind of wondering in process, I had printed out this
▶ 10:43 Monica C. Medeiros: resolution a few weeks back when we first had it before us and when i printed it out today i see that there's a whole third paragraph yeah that's been added but i don't see any we didn't we haven't talked about this before and i don't see any indication that's been amended the third paragraph should be there and that was an error so the third paragraph should be as you do read it i believe the third paragraph point of order madam chair did you read the version that we just voted on that have the third paragraph thank you i was just wondering when that got there because it it you know there's no indication that this has been amended or any change has been made in thank you uh to address alderman madaris's question as i believe the city clerk was
▶ 11:37 Monica C. Medeiros: attempting to um that is the draft that was originally submitted uh i believe the city clerk is telling us that she made a ministerial error and left out that paragraph it was left out when it was typed yeah okay so at some point it was changed from what was originally no it's never been never been changed well I mean it's it was changing what I saw and what I printed obviously so at some point it was changed when I you know I can't say that's what I'm asking I guess but you know that's one thing but you know this is this is very vague you know and we talk about reasonable reasonable anytime you use that you don't know what what does that mean that could mean in many things in many different places but primarily you know I alderman Rita touched upon
▶ 12:38 Monica C. Medeiros: this and i don't feel comfortable using this forum in the melrose board of aldermen to make this to start you know going down a slippery slope of discussing national political issues and you know this is something that have the president has called for a ban on bump stocks i really find it unlikely that this resolution is going to change the votes of Catherine Clark or Elizabeth Warren or Ed Markey on anything that they're going to do in Washington. Most of these issues have been addressed at the state level. When I think about those things and about what does this mean, it seems to me that this This is using a recent political, a recent tragedy, human tragedy, to politicize and grandstand, and I just don't want to be a part of that.
▶ 13:46 Monica C. Medeiros: I don't think that's the appropriate use of this forum, and I don't feel comfortable doing that. So when we vote on this, I'm going to vote present, and I don't feel comfortable to use this here. I think the kinds of things that we can do here, I mean, when you see such a tragedy as the most recent one, you know, it's only God knows what goes through an individual's head. But it does seem that we see instance after instance of people who don't feel part of the system, that feel like the system has failed them, that they haven't had it out. And this is the kind of thing that I think we can work with locally. think we've done a good job in uh with the use of interface as a sort of a helpline and referral
▶ 14:33 Francis X. Wright Jr.: service that the whole community can use that parents should be able to know where they can get help and you know i think we need to focus on the schools and providing opportunities and within our community and and that's where i'm going to choose to go moving forward but i'm not going to be supporting this today thank you thank you alderman wright um thank you i wasn't intending to speak again but i'm extremely insulted that i'd be accused of grandstanding politically on the dead bodies of 17 students i've been on this board for 13 years and i've never been so insulted I'll leave it at that as far as reasonable goes we don't have we're not in a position to dictate the terms of gun legislation so that's
▶ 15:28 Francis X. Wright Jr.: why it says reasonable let's ask them to sit down as adults Republicans and Democrats and figure something out that's reasonable and they've just been paralyzed on this issue for years for over a decade just sit down figure something out. Be reasonable as the Congress of the United States used to be. So whether it's your point or whether it's Alderman Forbes point or my point or Alderman Lemon's point, I'm just asking the 500-odd members of Congress, Senate, and House to sit down and be reasonable and address a situation that has people with mental health issues being able to walk around in without any id without any check and buy an ar-15 and go out and mow down a group of individuals be it at a nightclub or a school or at their workplace so if that's political grandstanding
▶ 16:36 Francis X. Wright Jr.: i'll do it just as the high school kids i suppose are politically grandstanding and the corporations are politically grandstanding and the people who are standing on the corners are politically grandstanding then yes that's what i'm doing that's what i'm doing i'm trying to prevent more people from getting mowed down with military style assault weapons so we can sit around and we can wring our hands and we can talk about how we're going to solve it with mental health counseling but we don't have any money for mental health counseling we certainly don't on the local level and the federal government is cutting that funding and the state doesn't have any money to increase the funding for it. We can stop people from wearing shoes when they walk through an airport
▶ 17:24 Scott M. Forbes: because once somebody lit a shoe bomb, but God forbid after multiple shootings that we in any way try to check and make sure someone's mentally stable or has an ID when they buy a military-style assault weapon. so yes I'm politically grandstanding if that's your definition thank you yeah I was I was just wanted to ask the alderman Rita to make of the order if he'd be willing to amend the order to it for it to say to pass reasonable legislation regarding the sale of assault weapons instead of reinstituting the assault weapons ban for the comments that I made earlier before it's an old ban it needs to be torn up more of these types of weapons have been created and more discussion needs to be had whether you're Democrat Republican whether you
▶ 18:27 Francis X. Wright Jr.: for the Second Amendment or not for the Second Amendment people need to come together and have that discussion so I was just willing if the maker of the order be willing to amend it well if I may I'm sure thank you I appreciate all them in Forbes request I don't have an objection to that I mean I prefer it the way it is but it's up to this board you know I think if we could perhaps show the Congress what reasonable means and find a a something we can live with then yes I'd be happy to support an amendment that a motion to amend in that case i think we would need we do have a motion on the table right now to for passage so we would need uh president's work to agree to withdraw his second um followed
▶ 19:22 Scott M. Forbes: by alderman wright i'd be happy to yes all right so i have a motion to amend uh the resolution replacing uh to reinstitute the ban of assault weapons and insert to pass reasonable legislation regarding the sale of assault weapons second we have a motion to amend by alderman forbes second by alderman poysel on discussion just could you say that one more time alderman forbes yes uh to remove um where it says to reinstitute the ban of assault weapons and in its place insert to pass reasonable legislation regarding the sale of assault weapons all in favor of the motion to amend all opposed motion passes we now have the amended resolution before us uh prison circle i did have you in line before that thank you madam chair um you can see how emotional this issue
▶ 20:38 Michael P. Zwirko: even in this chamber out in coffee shops out on street at work in school on the sidewalk can be And we like to think that these things don't happen here. And then a couple of weeks ago, we had a tragic incident in Winchester just next door. And as Alderman Wright previously mentioned, about 10, 15 years ago, the gentleman in Wakefield. I appreciate the motion to amend that was made by Alderman Forbes to tighten the language. I think that's a good spot on his part. I just wanted to say that we each come at this issue from different angles. Some of us may have served in the military. Some of us may have grown up hunters. Some may shoot skeet. Some may never own a gun, may never want to own a gun.
▶ 21:29 Michael P. Zwirko: That's fine. You don't have to. You have the right to. But the reality is, is that we're at a point now where it almost seems insurmountable, where children and even young adults and adults like myself wonder if when I go to a mall, that's going to be the last time that I go. And I'm sure, you know, maybe at the end of the day that the folks that are listed in Paragraph 3, they won't change their opinion, but this is a good discussion to have and I'm proud to have it. That's all I have, Madam Chair. Thank you. Okay. We have an amended resolution in front of us. Is there a motion? Motion to pass the amended resolution. Is there a motion to pass the resolution as amended by Alderman Tramontozzi?
▶ 22:13 Second. Seconded by Alderman Bewtra. All in favor? Aye. Second. Seconded by Alderman Bewtra. All in favor? Aye. Second. all in favor aye any opposed present motion passes will be taken up at the full board meeting the second item on our agenda this evening 2018-145 petition to the great and general court to enact a special act to further amend section 310 vacancy in office of mayor of the city charter sponsored by alderman Rita motion for passage a motion for passage by alderman wright one discussion need a second second i'll second the second on discussion the paper of the order great thank you um so as we all know we uh particularly the new members of this board know who had their first vote before uh what essentially was the selection of the new mayor
▶ 23:31 Francis X. Wright Jr.: um we all faced a situation that i don't think we ever anticipated which was replacing a sitting mayor uh midterm for what essentially will be almost two years um i heard a lot of comments from people in the community about this and um well i heard a few complaints most of them were just people expressing their view about how they thought it should be and most of the people who talked to me talked about how they would have thought it would have been a special election because there is almost two years at that point for the for the remainder of the term um so that got me thinking i i and i i looked at this provision in the charter and what i was also thinking about was how we fill a vacancy should we need to fill it from the board
▶ 24:42 Francis X. Wright Jr.: and how we go about doing that so So what this basically says is if we have a vacancy, and some of these dates or time frames are my thoughts, but are essentially placeholders for this board to consider, as you would expect, is that rather than have the midterm, essentially two years, be the bright line at which we either have a special election or we appoint a sitting mayor from the board, we make it 15 months. And you'll say, why 15 months perhaps? and it's because it takes three months to set up an election essentially as I understand it and it costs $30,000 is I check that again today it's cost about $30,000 for the put on a citywide election between the poll poll workers the police officers the printing everything that goes with having an
▶ 25:52 Francis X. Wright Jr.: election so the question is do we want to have so if you had 15 months you would have the election one year out because you have 90 days so the question is do we want to have a special election and with less than a year to go so that again is a placeholder I put in there which I thought was reasonable the next question is having the president serve as the acting mayor whether it be for the period between the time the mayor leaves office who the sitting mayor leaves office to the special election or from the time the sitting mayor leaves office until the next regular election no matter what do we want that to be the president of the Board of Aldermen and my thought is and this has no reflection
▶ 26:48 Francis X. Wright Jr.: any of us here because i don't think any of this is going to change before this year is out and i have all the respect in the world for everyone who went forward for for the mayor for the for the presidency when mayor dolan was leaving but i'm just trying to address what i saw as an issue and as it probably won't come up again for another decade or maybe even in our lifetime But my thought is that the president Site as acting mayor for a period of time, seven days, 10 days, 14 days, and then we elect somebody to serve as mayor until the special election or until the next election. And the reason why I'm thinking that is a couple of reasons. We may have a president who has no interest in being the acting mayor or the mayor,
▶ 27:37 Francis X. Wright Jr.: and we may have a president who cannot do that, cannot leave their business, leave their job, leave their career. And what happens in that case? We may have somebody who went for the presidency we all thought was great to be president, but maybe we thought somebody else on the board who wasn't in a position to run for president because of other commitments they have in their life, but for the purpose of perhaps being the next mayor may be willing to step into that position and i don't think the fact that somebody has a lifestyle or a career that would prevent them from putting a hundred percent into being president of the board after a full day's work should mean that they'll never be considered for a vacancy in the mayoral ship
▶ 28:28 Francis X. Wright Jr.: so I drafted in such a way that you would fill the vacancy from amongst the board after that brief period in which the president would serve as acting mayor be it again a week ten days two weeks a month however long this board might see fit should it see fit and then we would elect a mayor from this body to serve until the next election so that's basically where I'm coming from with this probably I'll take a look at it you probably could tell it was drafted by a lawyer and you may have a lot of questions I know we've gone beyond the time of the regular board meeting supposed to begin so I'm happy to take any questions I'm happy to hear your comments perhaps we let it sit you can think about it you can ask me what i was thinking when i wrote this versus that should you choose to
▶ 29:29 John N. Tramontozzi: be it here or outside of this meeting if appropriate and then perhaps if you believe it's appropriate we could have the city solicitor come in and discuss it or we can discuss that amongst ourselves at another meeting but i just kind of wanted to get it out there and see what everybody thought and maybe get some feedback from the community so those are my thoughts yes thank you um i want to thank alderman wright for bringing this forward i also heard from many residents who were surprised that we were not having a special election uh they felt that they missed out on opportunity to vote for who they felt was the person and most capable of handling the job so i would i would agree that um um for in principle with this
▶ 30:25 John N. Tramontozzi: um this amendment to uh to the charter um uh holding a special election there's just a couple um minor things and if we if we're up for discussion um i agree uh in terms of um that That 15 months is kind of an arbitrary figure, and I would be more comfortable with 12 months. One thing that I think needs to be changed is section 310 talks about 15 months or more before the next regular election. What about that period of time less than 15 months? imagine that's supposed to be taken care of in section C but section C also says 15 months or more so it directed to you matter chair to the maker of the order should that have read 15 months or less it's section C subsection C instead of law because I think this is a section that we be talking about where there's
▶ 31:28 John N. Tramontozzi: less than 15 months you see what I'm getting at yes I see that says more twice so that might be a need for a change there in the language also my other suggestion is in subparagraph B until said next election I know what you're trying to get at but next election start sounds like more like the general election so why don't we just say until said special election set forth in 310 a as opposed to the next election until said special election so delete next election put special election I guess I see with your point and I understand it all the men just to clarify that yeah German Tosi the only thing and certainly we can clean up the language but it also would include if the next regular city election is held within 120 days then you would wait
▶ 32:30 until that election but the incoming mayor would be seated immediately after that election so I don't know I have to go back and read the whole thing but but I understand your point I think we can certainly clean that up it's a great point I think we should we can hold it for further discussion and I just wanted to bring that to the attention of the board some some little minor changes that should be made but the point being is that I think it's a it's an appropriate amendment to our chatter thank you obviously alderman Rita you have more experience in drafting language such as this one thing I was curious about is if um it's more preferable to say 15 months versus a specific number of days like
▶ 33:26 Francis X. Wright Jr.: 455 was what i came up with um when i added 365 plus 90. um is there a particular preference or do you think there's any risk in that lack of specificity in terms of just a weird unlikely situation which came to pass and through you madam chair um no i think i used 15 months because um i think there was already a reference to three months um in the in the ordinance and i think i went back kind of fell back on that i can't find it off the top of my head here but either way is fine um again i chose 15 months because with the three months it would take to set it up it would give you it would make you make it one year from the date of that election to the next act regular election but you could use one year from the anniversary of the next election however whatever
▶ 34:21 Monica C. Medeiros: you want whatever we want to choose is as a benchmark thank you thank you uh thank you alderman wright i uh too had been well i certainly had had a lot of feedback that a lot of people in the public in our last situation with the mayor mayoral vacancy that expected that we would have a special election i had intended to bring something forward after some of our fun here settled down and we had a new alderman on the board so i'm glad that we are looking at this in theory just I think this sounds good I too believe something more like 12 months would be more appropriate than 15 months and just to say that I I do think this is something that is a change significant enough that we should really
▶ 35:21 Monica C. Medeiros: be looking at the voters taking weighing in on this and so i don't think this should is something that we should send to the um the general court i think it is something that the voters should weigh in on i had spoken with the city solicitor a few months back and you know at the time and i'm wondering if if alderman wright has spoken with the city solicitor and but a few months back i had spoken with him and he said there was at that time he indicated we could certainly put something together now and then you know for it to appear on the next municipal election ballot even though it's quite a ways out it would not be inappropriate from what he had shared with me a few months back so i think we should take our time and probably do right thank you thank
▶ 36:15 Michael P. Zwirko: Thank you. I have President Search followed by Alderman Ford. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think Yogi Berra said this is like deja vu all over again. So I appreciate the order. I do think that this is a provision when we went forth with the Charter Review back in 2017. You know, myself and I'm sure, you know, the other seven members of the Charter Commission wished that we had, even members of the public had brought up this section given what we've just been through in the past four months you know I could sit here and wax poetic about 18 months 15 months 12 months but I do agree with the point that Alderman Medeiros made you know just the little wrangling that we're doing right now and this is a substantive portion this talk discusses transfer of power to the
▶ 37:01 Michael P. Zwirko: executive office I feel is a substantive provision of the Charter which we were very very careful in the review to prevent ourselves from making lest we decide to put that before the voters so I'm in agreement on that point I would also just say you know a couple other things you know right now we just elected Alderman McMaster to join us well he'll be finishing out Alderman Mayor Infurna term then Alderman Infurna for a period of probably 21 months should we have a special election for the ward same time period you know I don't know I mean I just I feel like this is a little bit of Pandora's box I mean there may be provisions of the Charter we don't like there's certainly things that we did in the Charter review that I didn't approve of but ultimately
▶ 37:48 Michael P. Zwirko: you know we put forth after going through a very sausage making process of a year we ended up with the Charter that we had and you know we may not like parts of it but one thing we found out in all this turmoil since December is that the Charter works you know it works so there was never really any debate on the provisions there might have been debate on you know the shoulda coulda would've back in 2007 and maybe even during the Charter review but it works so I do agree that the section as written you know does leave a bad taste in the mouth of two years that's half of a mayoral term but no we didn't alter it the voters approved it I don't feel that this body can make that change on transfer of power in good faith without putting it before them I know we have a
▶ 38:44 Michael P. Zwirko: motion for passage before us but we clearly have a lot of discussion to do on this I would I would love to see this stay in committee so I'm agreeable on the on the on the merits of it I just how we get there is I think in another a question and i'll also add that about two or three weeks ago we sent the charter to the house of representatives for approval the one that we all approved in the fall of 2017 for what's that worth thank you madam chair those are all the comments i had at this time thank you um yeah i appreciate everybody's comments here uh i i would definitely want to recommend to hold this in committee um just for the the simple fact that i would like to you know obviously people looking at
▶ 39:29 Scott M. Forbes: this it may be you know you may have a day or two to think about it you may have looked at it today for the first time i'm not sure but you may have questions on it um i would like to hear what the city solicitor would have to say and get his input before we even had a vote uh i appreciate alderman wright and in making up the order uh on its merit i think it does make sense we always want to give the residents a chance to you know we want these we want these elections to be settled at the ballot box and i think that's the most important part about it so if we go to 15 months with 90 days as a special election that incoming person that would serve as mayor would have a year so i understand it on its merit i think alderman's work will make a great point as far as does that
▶ 40:10 Scott M. Forbes: go down into the the position of ward alderman or alderman at large in case if that ever happened that's a discussion we could potentially have and maybe insert something i'm not sure but i think right now uh i think it's best that if we do leave that in committee uh i'm not sure if that recommendation has been made i think there's actually a motion for it to pass if that motion was withdrawn i would like to make the motion to keep it in committee thank you second that was a motion yes i'll second it we're running out of time i think the first one has to be taken back we do have i believe um the main motion was made by alderman Rita i second it i'll withdraw my second thank you i withdraw my motion okay i'd like to make the motion to uh keep this order
▶ 40:58 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: in committee for further discussion second we have a motion to hold this order in committee by alderman forbes seconded by alderman mortimer on discussion alderman Lipper-Garabedian sure um i would support that motion i think that's a good idea and i appreciate everybody getting involved and weighing in on this if you recall back in January when we heard a lot of public comments about having a special election and we decided that the that was just too compressed of a timeline to really open up this discussion so I'm glad to see that we're having it now and just for the the good of the order when I took a look at all of the different city charters around the state it's very true that there's a wide variety of how the timelines work and that we fall
▶ 41:37 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: within a spectrum of some that have special elections much longer into the term for the mayor and some that actually never have a special election but I think on average we more communities seem to allow for a special election longer into the time frame than we have in our current city charter so this would certainly put us more it within the mainstream I think it's definitely worth continue to encourage the public to come forward with some thoughts on this maybe we can hear a little bit more public testimony if the public is more aware that this is something that's on our agenda and the next time we bring it up or we can encourage people to send us notes and that sort of thing so I'm glad that it's before us because it was certainly a
▶ 42:23 memorable first vote for me in January and I'm glad that we'll continue to explore this. On the motion to hold the Order in Committee, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? This order will remain in the Appropriations Committee for further discussion. Motion to adjourn, Madam Chair. Second. Motion to adjourn by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Forbes. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? We are adjourned. Good evening. Good evening. This is March 19th, Monday, March 19th. This is the full Board regularly scheduled meeting of the Melrose Board of Congressman, calling this meeting to order. Clerk, Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Arlen Boutra. Here. Here. Arlen Bozell. Here. Here. Arlen Forbes. Here.