Health, Education & Welfare Committee — 2021-03-04
Attendance
Christopher Cinella ; Jack Eccles ; Maya Jamaleddine ; Leila Migliorelli ; Robb Stewart ; Cory Thomas
Agenda
- Call to Order
- Public Comment
- Orders
- ORDER-2021-86 : Appointment of Paul Fahey to the Library Board of Trustees for a three-year term; said term to end on the last day of February, 2024
- ORDER-2021-87 : Re-Appointment of Cathryn M. Mercier, 466 Pleasant St., to the Melrose Public Library Board of Trustees for a three-year term; said term to end on the last day of February, 2023
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MARCH 4, 2021 Web-based remote meeting Committee Meeting 7:00 PM , Melrose, MA 02176 The public should take notice that the Melrose City Council may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the City Council 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 Maya Jamaleddine Chair Present Leila Migliorelli Vice Chair Present Jack Eccles Voting Present Robb Stewart Voting Present 7:05 PM Cory Thomas Voting Late Christopher Cinella President, ex oficio Present
ORDER-2021-86 Appointment Appointment of Paul Fahey to the Library Board of Trustees for a three-year term; said term to end on the last day of February, 2024 Recommend Passage City Council
ORDER-2021-87 Appointment Re-Appointment of Cathryn M. Mercier, 466 Pleasant St., to the Melrose Public Library Board of Trustees for a three-year term; said term to end on the last day of February, 2023 Recommend Passage City Council City of Melrose Page 1 3/4/2021 8:38 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:00 Maya Jamaleddine: Okay, I'm just going to make a note for the participants. When the item is brought before the council, I will make you attend, I'm sorry, participants, so that you will have video and audio access. I got a question from somebody saying they can't, they're not on the video yet. Thank you. Okay, good evening. My name is Maya Jamaleddine, Chair of the Health Education and Welfare Committee, joining me this evening. Voting members, Vice Chair Lyra Migliorelli, Councilor Jack Eccles, Councilor Rob Stewart, Councilor Corey Thomas. Actually, Councilor Corey Thomas is still not with us, and President Christopher Sinella. Pursuant to Governor Baker's orders, suspending certain provision of the open meeting law
▶ 0:59 Maya Jamaleddine: and the governor's order imposing strict limitation on the number of people that may gather in one place, this meeting of the Health, Education, and Welfare Committee will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. We will post a comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Mara's website and on mmtv3.org. Madam Chair, can you call the roll? Chair Jamaleddine? Here. Vice-Chair Migliorelli? Here. Councillor Eccles? Here. Councillor Stewart? Here. President Sonnella? Here. Thank you. And I would like, if there is no, no one is opposing, I would like to open the floor for Public participation, public participation is open.
▶ 2:12 Maya Jamaleddine: Do we have anyone, Madam Clerk? The three people in the room are participants in this evening's meeting. Okay, and if there is no one opposing, I would like to close public participation. Okay, public participation is closed. Um, um, we have now before us order 2021 dash 86. Appointment of Paul to the library board of trustees. For a 3 years terms that turn to end on the last day of February 2024. Can can we have the participants. Join us would you like to suspend the rules? Sorry, 2nd, we have motion to suspend the rules made by, um, President, second that by vice vice chair. Madam, can you call that all? Yeah. Yes, counselor. Yes, counselor Stewart. Yes. President. Yes, 5, yes, yes. Bring them in now. Thank you. Good evening. Everyone. It's great to see you all again and I will apologize in advance for the bird that is going.
▶ 3:51 Paul Brodeur: Again, going crazy in the background, because he knows the WebEx of the zoom is on. I very much appreciate you taking up these 2 nominations tonight. As you know that they are both. Appointments to the library board of trustees, I'd like to open by expressing my thanks and the thanks of the trustees and really the city as a whole. Um, to the clerk of committees, Kristen foot, who has done and continues to do incredible work. In many ways, shapes and forms, but is leaving her formal role as a member of the library board of trustees and I know we would all be remiss if we didn't extend our. our very deep appreciation and thanks for all that work you've certainly left the institution in a better place uh than you found it and um that having been said on to the new blood so i
▶ 4:45 Paul Brodeur: am delighted to offer for your consideration uh paul fahey paul is new uh to melrose but i've known him uh for many years and if you had a chance to review his resume and background you you will see that he has a wealth of experience in municipal government and in state government. To have a person on the library board of trustees that is passionate about libraries, is committed to the mission of the library, and also understands about how municipals work and where the buckets of money come from, and how to make the trains run efficiently. Mr. Fahey is absolutely qualified to do that, and I am delighted to offer his nomination for your consideration, and I very much appreciate him stepping forward.
▶ 5:41 Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and Mr. Fahey, thank you for your time and for your consideration, also for stepping up and the floor is yours. Thank you, Madam Chair, Mayor, and members of the council. I appreciate the kind introduction. It's good to be the other Paul on the call. I appreciate the mayor's confidence. I have had a long history of involvement in government, as the mayor said, at the state level for many, many years, both in the legislature and the executive branch, and particularly in local government. I grew up in Watertown. I was very involved at the local level in both elected and appointed positions for many years. And then went to school, got involved in government more deeply on the state side, worked in the private sector doing government affairs for a while, and recently came back to municipal government as a chief of staff to the former mayor of Methuen and now currently the mayor of Amesbury.
▶ 6:43 I've always been a passionate library supporter. I was a library volunteer in fourth grade at the Brown School when I was a kid, and I am a frequent user of library books and just very, very appreciative of the opportunity. I'm new to the community as the mayor said, I have a lot to learn. Sounds like I'm going to be filling some big shoes with the departure of the current trustee and I'm looking forward to that. And I hope I can bring some of the experience that I have outside of Melrose to the board. So, I appreciate it. I'm happy to answer any questions that anybody on the committee has. Thank you so much. Do we have any 1 of my fellow counselors would like to ask a question or make any comments?
▶ 7:25 Leila Migliorelli: Thank you Madam Chair and thank you Mr. Mayor and Mr. Fahey for being here tonight. I'm excited to have somebody with a lot of municipal experience joining this board. I'm just curious, I know you talked about your love of libraries and things like that. Just wondering about what you might find to be challenges of bringing the library you know back to the heart of the community that it was you know before covid and um you know just any thoughts about uh you know i know at times we talked about library expansions and things like that and just curious where you know where you're thinking your role will be on the board moving forward in those areas thank you counselor i think the role of the library board is to
▶ 8:13 set policy it's not to manage the library uh to work with the administration the library director and the library staff but also to bring i think the perspective of the community and if it's a good board which i think it is from what i've seen there's different perspectives there um we're all dealing with what is the world going to look like post covet um as far as you know the building itself people's level of comfort in the building um programming uh outreach again i'm new to melrose i'm not gonna try to convince you that i that i know the community that well yet but i think i know what to look for um where i work currently we're in a very similar situation a library has been um only offering curbside for a period of time was obviously closed in the early
▶ 8:54 days of covet is just about to reopen to the public it's also an older building with some building needs so i think there's some parallels there i think there are other libraries that are in a much better position both in terms of their um the buildings being newer and having less of the kind of challenges that i suspect i have not been in the library and i've been a user uh from from the curbside that i haven't gone in yet but i i can you know i can sense that there's probably some similar issues so i think it's going to be a big challenge and i think the board needs to um you know talk about what that means as far as programming and policies and make sure that um like everything else that we're adjusting to what things are going to look like as we come out of
▶ 9:31 coven um i know there are issues around the building and possible development of you know You know, facilities in the building and renovations and so forth. And again, I, I'm supportive of that in concept. I need to see more of the details. I'll certainly share my thoughts with my colleagues on the board with the mayor. But I do think, like, we're all dealing with in our, in our jobs here, and in my case, in my day job as to what. What things are going to look like post-COVID and I think we're still figuring that out frankly. Thank you, Mr. Thank you. That's helpful. Next we have Councillor Stewart. Thank you, Madam Chair, and welcome Mr. Fahy to presenting your position. Much appreciated. It's always good to see a Ward 3 resident coming forward.
▶ 10:23 Robb Stewart: My question, and it may involve both the Mayor as well as yourself, is the Mayor's platform pre-COVID, he had a strong desire to Renovate the library and COVID sort of upset that apple cart. I think to a significant extent. I'm curious if you've been, if you followed or have taken into account some of the ideas that the mayor had presented prior to this, and any thoughts on what we can do in lieu of the events that have unfolded. I'd be interested in your perspective and Mr mayor, please, if you have any thoughts as well. Counselor, I did speak to the mayor when we discussed this appointment, he gave me some homework, which I eagerly did was to look at what the sort of current plans and thoughts are again.
▶ 11:23 I can't tell you that I've really delved into them in any detail. I think it would be important to. Talk with the other trustees with the director and the mayor about the plans as I support them in concept. I, I won't speak for them. I suspect like, a lot of things. Things may be tweaked a little bit is in terms of cobit and roll out of this and I am supportive of it's a beautiful building just from the outside yet. I'm supportive of the efforts to to make it a better functional building as to what that functionality may or may not be. We're doing a similar thing here with 1 of the schools that's being built and it's very interesting to be working on a project like this in the context of cobit because we have an opportunity with this building in Amesbury to think about the ways that we've had classrooms set up the way we've had activity rooms and so forth.
▶ 12:09 Paul Brodeur: And obviously the library is a smaller building than a large elementary school, but I think some of those things are things that I look at as a trustee, but I defer to the mayor as far as if any of his plans have changed. That's something none of these guys are going to say. I defer to the mayor, so I appreciate that comment. It is probably a much more deep conversation for another day, but the short answer is the same answer that I gave during the campaign, and I think I've been consistent since, and it is that we're obviously going to take a look, but I think it is incredibly worthwhile investment that we have already made before my time, made some investment in terms of the plans. It is still a proposition based on the idea that the Mass.
▶ 13:06 Paul Brodeur: Board of Library Commissioners Capital Investment Fund will make this a pennies on the dollar project. Did you be inclined to go forward? That's probably good for now. Certainly, one thing that I've thought about in terms of COVID is the need for, on a somewhat generic basis, modern space that is owned or controlled by the city, with the exception of the middle school and to a much lesser degree, high school. All our buildings are in pretty tough shape and when we need to do things like have, particularly your cooling centers, warming centers, potential meeting places that can be segmented off unlike the current library, I think we will find a lot of wisdom in making this investment as a result of some of the experiences we've had with COVID.
▶ 14:06 But again, that's a longer conversation that I know that we'll dive into the time that the state says it is, that funding is available for us to claim or take a walk on. Great. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Fahey, for stepping up. Look forward to supporting you on this. Thanks, Constable. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Is there anyone else? Motion to recommend to the full board. Thank you. We have a motion to make a man made by presidents and Allah seconded by a chair by councillor Eccles madam Clerk, can you please call the room? Cheshire malady. Yes. Yeah, I should make Leary. Yes. Yeah councillor Eccles Yes councillor Stewart Yes. Yes councillor Thomas Yes President Sunilla. Yes
▶ 15:12 Paul Brodeur: Yes, thank you. Thank you. Thank you counselors. Okay, next we have order 2021-87, the appointment of Catherine M. Mercy for 66 Pleasant Street to the Melrose Public Library Board of Trustees for a three years term, set term to end on the last day of February 2023. Thank you, Madam Chair, and again, I want to thank you for your consideration. I know it's a little bit unusual that we have a reappointment coming before you for your consideration, but it struck me, given the central place of the library within the community and the fact that Dr. Mercier was appointed before, I think anyone that's on the screen right now was a member of the council, It would be a terrific opportunity for her to reintroduce herself to you to talk a little bit more about as an experienced trustee. I'm like, Mr.
▶ 16:21 Paul Brodeur: To the extent you're interested how the library is doing a little bit of perspective on where it's been and where it might be going. And I also would commend you to take a good look at her resume as well because. It is jaw dropping in terms of the experience and the, you know, the depth of experience and the quite frankly, the, the marriage of job to this. This particular opportunity is really a match made in heaven. So with that, I again, I thank you for your consideration and I look forward to. Hearing from Dr. Mercier. That requires I learn how to use Webex instead of Zoom. So I will do that. My name is Kathy Mercier. I'm delighted to be asked to be if I was open for reappointment. I'm delighted to come and talk with you today. I started my service on the Board of Trustees in April of 2015, I think, either 2015 or 2016. And yes, it's a thrill to be back.
▶ 17:28 enjoyed this work as part of the work i worked as co-chair of the most recent strategic plan for the library that was an important piece for us to do and i was asked to be co-chair because at simmons university where i am a full professor and have been working for the past 35 years at simmons i was a co-lead on our university-wide strategic plan and so that it was simply a skill that i was i was building and i will tell you running the strategic plan process with the community with the staff at the library with people who came in across the transom to borrow books with business leaders and with civic leaders in the city was one of the best ways to get to know both the reach of the library but also to get to know how it served our community so that was
▶ 18:17 that was a real pleasure and we were delighted when the board accepted that proposal. What else can I tell you? Of the 35,000, 37,000 I think our last round was 37,000 electronic circulation on overdrive in February 2020 alone through the library, I was probably 30,000 of those books that were circulated. I am a frequent library user. I believe in the mission of the library. I believe in the work of the library. My work at Simmons is largely as the director of the graduate degree programs in children's literature and the Center for the Study of Children's Literature. Many of our students will go into some kind of book industry work, writers, illustrators, publishers, but also teachers and librarians. And I do a lot of work with students who will go into
▶ 19:06 library practice. And I think I shared this with the mayor when I talked with him earlier. You know, as an academic in this field, I make great use of picture book collections and young adult collections. In the city of Melrose, our collections are also serving a wide range of school children. We do not have school and media specialists in all of our schools, especially our elementary schools. And the absence of that on a curriculum and on a curriculum use and collection development platform means that there's additional demand for those services and for those books through our public library we have been very very lucky i think at the melrose public library that they have been able to fulfill that need for both our public schools our parochial schools
▶ 19:55 and their charter schools that that operate within the city or send us send us their students that is an unusual arena to tap for a public library usually if you have you know if you are in In Burlington or Lexington, you have the citywide per capita income funding to support school library media specialists in your school. If you're in Everett, there's a low enough per capita income that you qualify for other kinds of funding to support those staff positions in your school. Melrose is in that ugly sweet spot in between where we have a decent and a healthy per capita income but we we don't have exactly um what it would take to be able to fully fund those positions in our schools so for me the library being able to fulfill that need for the children of this
▶ 20:45 community matters matters a great deal um i think that's i'm happy to answer any questions that you have um today has been a high day for me i was quoted in the new york times this morning and in a way that gave me a last word which is something i really really like so so that was i've been on um i started getting questions about the quotation at like nine o'clock this morning when i was trying to do my job and teach my class so it's been a long day but i'm really happy to end it with you here today thank you um dr mercier and um we have uh counselor echoes would like to ask questions thank you i really appreciate um the opportunity to talk with you especially um someone who's a reappointment i guess um it would be helpful for me to
▶ 21:34 Kind of understand it, because I don't think we get this opportunity often. What is the meeting of the board of library trustees look like? And like, what's what's the normal business on the agenda? Oh, the normal business and the normal business and the meetings, the way they look, you know, we all sit around a table. Now, we're sitting around in zoom. The director provides an agenda where we have updates on all facets of the library from the services and the programmings that were offered to. Circulation statistics to finances and updates on on budget and budget expenses. Extraordinary demands. We hear of the of some of the more exceptional pieces of correspondence. That might come to to the director that might need advice or or be sort of a little out of the ordinary.
▶ 22:26 Um, and we really review with the library director, the policies, um, that that come, you know, for example, policies around so many of them are about in face to face service, which of course, we're not we're not doing right now, but policies around library hours. When will the library be open online weekends or not online on weekends during holiday weekends policies around whether or not there can be on it. whether or not adults unattended by children, I think that's a fair way to put it, can be in the children's room. And while that does not seem like a very big issue, if you have the wrong adult who's unattended by a child, that could be, we don't want a whole lot of adults without kids hanging out in our children's room, right?
▶ 23:13 For reasons that I think make a lot of sense for the safety of the children in that room. Doesn't mean adults can't go in to the children's room. I'm an unattended, I'm not attended by children. I go into the children's room all the time, but I would expect to be asked a question if I was just kind of hanging out, doing my own thing and going to what Mr. Fahey said earlier, we don't have a lot of space in the current library. And so there's not the children's room space is really, really, really tapped and stretched by children's programming right now. So, it's also, you know, how are we best going to use that space? We are not setting, working with the director of the library or the library staff to determine how that space will be used on a day-to-day basis.
▶ 24:00 Maya Jamaleddine: But we are very much consulted when there are issues around or collisions around the use of that space. So, I'm happy to give you a sense of our answers of our business. For sure. Yeah, thanks. That was really helpful. You're welcome. Any other counselor would like to ask any question. Okay, I would like to thank you and I, um, all the information that you provided are very helpful and, um. Benefits for us to know and learn more about the library and the board and the role of the board of trustees. Um, what is the will of the committee? I'm sure I'd like to make a motion to recommend this documents here for a reappointment. Okay, we have a motion made by counselor, seconded by president. Can you call it on.
▶ 25:05 Yes, vice chair. Yes, counselor. Yes, counselor Stewart. Yes. Counselor Thomas yes. Yes. President. Yes, success. Thank you. Thank you very much for this opportunity. I look forward to serving this community for as long as you'll have me and we are very excited about the prospect of the building renovation project. We are number 3 on the list just to let, you know, we've moved from 10 to 3 and 4 years. So, we're excited to move forward with this and looking forward to welcoming them able to afford me to talk about our next steps. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you. Thank you all. Madam chair at this time. I'll make a motion to adjourn. Second. Second. Okay. We have a motion to adjourn made by Councilor Stewart, seconded by Vice Chair Migliorelli. Madam Chair, can you call the roll? Madam Clerk?
▶ 26:06 Chair Jamaleddine? Yes. Yes. Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Yes. President Sinella? Yes. Success, I'll just note for the record that council atomic joined us at 705. Okay, thank you. So I apologize, but at least I wasn't on camera. So, thank you. Good night.