Legal & Legislative Committee — 2021-03-08
Attendance
Christopher Cinella ; Jack Eccles ; Jen Grigoraitis ; Shawn M. MacMaster ; Leila Migliorelli ; John N. Tramontozzi
Agenda
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE LEGAL & LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MARCH 8, 2021 Web-based remote meeting Committee Meeting 6:45 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 Jen Grigoraitis Chair Present Leila Migliorelli Vice Chair Present 6:51 PM John N. Tramontozzi Voting Present Shawn M. MacMaster Voting Present Jack Eccles Voting Present Christopher Cinella President, ex oficio Present
ORDER-2021-80 Administrative Order Amending Chapter A, Article II, Section 202 of the Administrative Code of the City of Melrose to Expand the Membership of the Council on Aging Recommend Passage City Council City of Melrose Page 1 3/8/2021 8:40 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:00 Jen Grigoraitis: We can get started. Good evening. The time is 6 45 p.m on Monday, March 8, 2021. This is a meeting of the Legal and Legislative Committee. I am Chair Grigoraitis. Joining me tonight are voting members Councilors Eccles, McMaster, and Tramontozzi, and President Cinella, ex officio, and also joining us are non-voting members Councilors Jamala Dean and Councilor Thomas. I will now read the remote meeting information pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the Open Meeting Law and the Governor's March 15, 2020 order imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place. This meeting of the Legal and Legislative Committee will be
▶ 0:46 Jen Grigoraitis: 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 melrose website and on mmtv3.org and without objection from the committee we will now open public comment do we have anyone wishing to speak from the public anyone in the room if you'd like to raise your digital hand no one has done so okay without objection i'll now close public comment and i'll note for the record that we're also joined tonight by vice chair Migliorelli so we have one order on our agenda tonight order 2021-80 amending chapter a article 2 section 202 of the administrative code of the city of melrose to expand the membership of the
▶ 1:37 council on aging i believe we have some members of the administration here with us tonight i'll entertain a motion to suspend the rules motion to suspend the rules Okay, so we have a motion to suspend the rules made by Councilor Tramontozzi, seconded by Councilor Eccles. Madam Clerk of committees, can you please call the roll? Chair Grigoraitis? Yes. Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. President Cinella? Yes. 6 yes. Okay, so the motion passes, and I believe we have the city solicitor. We do in the mayor, bring those in now. Good evening everybody. It is a pleasure to see you all again. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you a bit about our Council on aging. So, as you all probably know, the Council on aging has had 5 members.
▶ 2:46 Paul Brodeur: For, I suspect since its inception, and we have an opportunity. To add a couple of members to that and the very fair question is, why would we do that? Well, for a bunch of reasons. 1st, and foremost, we've done this in consultation with the existing members and Stacy, our executive, our executive director. And a couple of things about that 1st of all is, I do want to acknowledge the incredible amount of work that the council and aging has done. Around the pandemic most recently, and most importantly around. Supporting our seniors and grant, frankly, others that we're trying to navigate the system. Of of signing up for vaccination and I, I know you all know what that has been like for friends, family, particular, maybe moms and dads out there that are struggling.
▶ 3:44 Paul Brodeur: We all know the dysfunction of the state website and its several iterations and the 211 system that wasn't always helpful in terms of folks navigating that. They have done incredible work in addition to maintaining as best they can their normal suite of services to our senior population. It's also important to recognize that they need the help. are very interested in the expanded in the expanded board but also as we have talked about a lot over the past you know over the past year is the city's interest in my interest in particular in expanding the diversity of certain of our of our boards and commissions and uh in this area we certainly we have great folks that are serving and serving diligently and very well
▶ 4:38 Paul Brodeur: but we need to recognize that our senior population is diverse in many ways quite frankly in terms of background gender sexual orientation but also trying to where they're at in terms of health care needs in terms of being involved with the community in terms of the range of supports that they need and services that they'd like to see from the senior center so you know we've done a lot of good work i think supporting our elder community over the last month or so and this is just another step in that process to bring that attention and those resources to bear on this population i would turn it over with your uh with your discretion to the seated solicitor who can kind of take you through the mechanics of how this works from uh from a legal perspective in
▶ 5:27 particular changes to the administrative code thank you thank you mayor broder uh just very quickly so what is before you this evening is an amendment to the city's administrative code and as some members may recognize under the city charter whenever an amendment to the administrative code is contemplated there is a public hearing requirement before actual final action can be taken and i know that the uh the clerk committees and the city clerk have been working on that process as well uh with my office so what this is in front of you this evening is a very simple amendment to uh administrative code section 202 to effectively as the mayor said expand the membership of the council on aging from five to seven members and um i will not belabor the point
▶ 6:12 Paul Brodeur: we are here to answer your questions this evening so i'm happy to answer any questions you may have thank you mr van kampen are there any questions from the committee members are there okay are there any questions from any of the non oh i'm sorry council uh vice Chair Migliorelli. Thank you, Chairwoman. Thank you, Mayor Broder and Mr. Van Kampen for being here tonight. I'm just curious, is the expansion of members on the Council on Aging, does that have any budgetary effects at all? No, as with almost no exception, our folks serve as volunteers, give of their time, their energy, their expertise, and they are not compensated. So this would not have any effect on the COA budget. Great. Thank you. That seems like a good opportunity to expand a council that's serving a much
▶ 7:14 Shawn M. MacMaster: needed population, especially now in COVID and post-COVID times. So I'm supportive of this order. Thank you, Vice Chair Migliorelli. Councillor McMaster. Madam chair, I agree that this is also needed. It's a good opportunity. I did have 2 questions though. The 1st is why 2, how did we arrive at the number 2? So, expanding from 5 to 7 and the 2nd number is, is there a reason? Why, maybe we didn't consider looking to change the age in section a, and B, from 60 to 55, knowing that older adults and older adult services are starting these days at age 55. Great question. Expansion to recognize that you want a manageable number. You obviously need an odd number, so that's why two rather than three or one are another number,
▶ 8:12 Paul Brodeur: and you still want a manageable size. This is what we talked about with the Council on Aging, mindful of the time that they meet and the desire to be able to maintain a quorum. I'll wait in favor of going to seven. In terms of the age requirement, we didn't feel a need to do that. There are some services or some parts of the law that trigger senior status at 55. Most are older than that. But also, given the opportunity, there are some slots that are available that don't have to go to folks. Um, that are under 60, those are available to us. We feel like we will have. Opportunities for folks to get involved 1 of our recent appointments is someone under 60. Um, and, you know, that is important historically, the group has tended to be.
▶ 9:14 Maya Jamaleddine: Has tended to be seniors quite not not a ton of turnover as well. Another reason to expanded someone. Very good. Thank you. Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Council McMaster. Any other voting committee members wishing to speak. Hey, I know you had your hand up earlier. Thank you. This is a great opportunity to serve and extend our support to our seniors. I support this, although I am a non voting member. However, I just have a couple of questions with. Would they be limited to certain hours, or is it just open to how much they would like to volunteer? It's a great question. It's at the COA meets once a month at 9 o'clock in the morning as we sit here today. That is up to the membership to decide how they want to structure those meetings.
▶ 10:22 Paul Brodeur: And ultimately, it's up to them about how much work they want to do outside of the parameters of that meeting. By that, I don't mean to suggest that they will have meetings outside of the meeting law or anything that to that end. But, you know, they could very much decide. Based on their time, their energy, their interest. That they want to stand up other activities outside of those. Outside of those meetings, if you also, if there's someone that has an expertise in housing, say, they might want to do some work in particular to. Seniors and access to housing and downsizing and some of the things that we've spoken about. Earlier, it may be a state planning. It could be access to home care services, whatever the case may be, but ultimately.
▶ 11:12 Paul Brodeur: That'll be up to them. And you've mentioned that the 1 of the reasons why we wanted them is because we will be extending is because we want to ensure that we have, you know, diverse group. How how we can ensure that by selecting what is it that we're looking into not to be flip a part of is the is that you ask and it's only 2 spots. I'll give you an example. I'll give you what I think of as a concrete example. Most of you know that I worked for the Executive Office of Elder Affairs as their general counsel for maybe two and a half, three years. One of the things that I learned about as part of that experience was the particular needs of seniors in the LGBTQ community. because for folks particularly for older folks that are part of that community you know changes
▶ 12:11 Paul Brodeur: come rapidly and we sometimes forget that older seniors did not necessarily have the option of getting married they might not have felt comfortable coming out they quite frankly particularly in the ultimate might not have a lot of peer relationships and so things that we sometimes count on. You know, a spouse that will help us manage our affairs as we get older, if need be. You know, managing healthcare concerns, things of that nature that, again, we somewhat take for granted, create real issues that a lot of folks don't think about or aren't familiar with in terms of what it's like to be aging. There's a group called the LGTB Aging project that is uh some folks that i got to know uh during my time at elder affairs they're now
▶ 13:06 Jen Grigoraitis: part of the fenway community health initiative but that is kind of that is one particular cohort that i thought about in terms of in terms of our outreach that you know i suspect we will find out but i don't think we're serving as broadly as we need to great thank you thank you are there any other questions at this time? Motion to recommend passage. Second. So we have a motion to recommend for passage by Councillor McMaster, seconded by Councillor Eccles. Madam Clerk of Committees, can you please call the roll? Chair Grigoraitis? Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councillor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councillor McMaster? Yes. Councillor Eccles? Yes. President Yes, 6 yes, 6 yes. So the motion carries. Thank you very much. Mayor Broder and Mr. VanCampen. And in 1 minute, we will begin the public hearing related to this order.