Legal & Legislative Committee — 2021-08-16
Attendance
Christopher Cinella ; Jack Eccles ; Jen Grigoraitis ; Shawn M. MacMaster ; Leila Migliorelli ; John N. Tramontozzi
Agenda
- Call to Order
- Public Comment
- Orders
- ORDER-2021-160 : Requesting that the Honorable City Council review and take action relative to recommendations made by the Board of Registrars of Voters for the consolidation of non-ADA compliant polling locations in the City of Melrose in accordance with information provided by Secretary of State William Galvin's office.
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE LEGAL & LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE CALENDAR● AUGUST 16, 2021 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 6:45 PM 562 Main Street, 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 John N. Tramontozzi Voting Present Shawn M. MacMaster Voting Present Jack Eccles Voting Present Christopher Cinella President, ex oficio Present The Legal and Legislative Committee is called to order by Chair Grigoraitis. This meeting is recorded and may be viewed on www.mmtv3.org Non-voting Councilors in attendance include: Councilor Thomas, Councilor Jamaleddine and Councilor Garipay
ORDER-2021-160 Request Requesting that the Honorable City Council review and take action relative to recommendations made by the Board of Registrars of Voters for the consolidation of non-ADA compliant polling locations in the City of Melrose in accordance with information provided by Secretary of State William Galvin's office. Health, Education & Welfare Committee City of Melrose Page 1 8/30/2021 3:57 PM
Transcript
▶ 8:37 Jen Grigoraitis: audience we'll call you up you are in the right place thank you all right i apologize for the delay i lost everything on my computer when i closed it including the agenda do you need one do you have a hard time actually no it's okay thank you for yours you need one No, I'm good. All right. Good evening, everyone. Sorry for the delay. The time is 6.51 p.m. on Monday, August 16th, 2021, and this is a meeting of the Legal and Legislative Committee. I am Councillor Grigoraitis, the Chair, in lieu of a roll call vote. Joining me tonight are voting Member, Vice Chair, Councillor Migliorelli, Councillors Tramontozzi, Eccles, and McMaster, and President Sinella, ex oficio. Also joining us tonight are non-voting Member, Councillors Thomas, Jamaleddine, and Garipay.
▶ 10:11 Jen Grigoraitis: This takes the place of a notice of a quorum for the record. In accordance with the open meeting law, this meeting is being recorded and broadcast on our local cable access channel as well as live streamed through mmtv3.org it will be available for future viewing through the city of melrose's website as well at this time i will entertain a motion to open public comment motion public comment second so we have a motion to open public comment may be president sonala seconded by vice chair Migliorelli all in favor aye okay so public comment is open this is the portion where any member of the public can speak to an item on the legal and legislative committee meeting agenda do we have any in-person Member wishing to speak do we have anyone online if you'd like to
▶ 10:58 Jen Grigoraitis: speak to the agenda on legal legislative please raise your digital hand no one's raising their hand digitally I will entertain a motion to close public comment motion to close public comment we have a motion to close public comment by president snell president snell seconded by vice chair Migliorelli all in favor okay public comment is now closed tonight we have one item on our agenda order 2021-160 requesting that the honorable city council review and take action relative to recommendations made by the board of registrars of voters for the consolidation of non-ada compliant polling locations in the city of melrose in accordance with information provided by secretary of state william galvin's office and i know we have several Member who are going to be joining us
▶ 11:55 up at the podium so while they get themselves situated i will entertain a motion to suspend the rules motion to suspend the rules second so we have a motion to suspend the rules made by president senella seconded by vice chair Migliorelli all in favor aye aye the motion carries uh clerk foot am i turning it over to you for introductions and an overview sure um my far left is nick leon new elections administrator for the city behind him is assistant director jim troop public works eric wildman board of registrars ted hunt chair Boyd of registrars and myself city clerk kristen foot we would welcome questions you would welcome questions I just just for perspective folks I mean obviously you have the packet just in
▶ 13:11 terms of the timeline where we are on the 14th of May we had Bridget Simmons Murphy come out and review several sites polling locations she was accompanied by myself Cindy Silveri, Ed Hunt, Kristen Foote, Mayor Broder, counselors Gregor Edison Sinella as well went through all several locations to get a feel for what was and was not in compliance with the ADA she provided her results of the survey on the 20th before the Boyd of Registrars met reviewed the results of the document afforded a memo to you I think originally on the 15th and then it was subsequently revised on the 10th of August I believe there was a I know I'm not sure what you want to call it was a factual and correction in the
▶ 14:08 Jack Eccles: document that we had to take a look at and revise and then the other intervening pieces on July 29th the governor signed in the law extending certain provisions of the COVID regulations for vote by mail no excuse absentee early in-person voting through December 15th. So there are there are two parallel tracks here. We have the continuation of the legislature's unfortunate step process iterations of the extension of the COVID provisions that we have been since last March and the parallel track on that is the the Merrill specific review of the polling locations. So those are those are kind where we are today so um so that's that's by by way of background so to that end if there's questions or we dial and i just want to take a moment to welcome nick formally to your new role
▶ 15:06 Jen Grigoraitis: as our elections administrator welcome to the city of melrose we're thrilled to have you and then just before i turn it over to the my colleagues for questions i just want to frame based on a some discussions i had had with the city solicitor that there are three options before the council tonight one is to say is which would be to revert polling locations to where they were pre-pandemic in 2019 one would be to consider one either of the two recommendations that were put before us in the memo from the board of registrars and that the way because of the change in the state law there though any decision that this body makes would be in place until we either proactively changed that decision or we put a time limit within that
▶ 15:50 Jen Grigoraitis: language so I know this is a little atypical of some of what comes before us I just I hope that's kind of a helpful framing of how I understand the options that are before us so at this time I'm happy to see I'll start with committee Member who have questions vice chair Migliorelli thank you madam chair and thank you all for being here tonight I was just wondering if you could walk us through your analysis of the different options that you presented for the council it would be helpful to kind of hear a little bit more in detail and for the benefit of the public whoever's listening um just about the the pros and cons that the board of registrars saw between options number one and two and keeping keeping it the same basically
▶ 16:32 i mean i think the the the the first option which would have been um the one point location we that was we were able to do that last year with a with a certain degree of success I think it was generally well received the interesting piece of last year was the fact that so many people voted by mail and voted early I think roughly for the for the roughly 16,000 that voted uh it was just about 4 100 people that voted on election day um so that that um that was that's one element of it the interesting piece with um since the date of this memo was written and then revised i was in when you look at the memo we were under the impression that we would have to change uh and do our homework petition to do the uh continue the central voting um that
▶ 17:32 turned out to be we were able to confirm with the state that that is not the case the legislation did not sunset that provision uh section i of acts of 2020 255 i believe it was um did not sunset that provision so um that i think is a viable option um more more so than if we had to go the home rule route i would think that based on time how it would take to get through the legislature i i wouldn't think that it would have been viable um but i think as we sit here today and the other element of this at this point is now the unfortunate reality as we are all sitting here in mass this evening and where we are with kobe um that is another consideration um the the sad reality is that we have been backsliding um so we might i don't know where we're going to
▶ 18:22 be when on november 2nd if spacing will become an issue if this room is not suitable to vote in anymore um so those are the other those are the other that's the compounding factor that candidly four weeks ago wouldn't have been something that would have been on our radar then the other two elements the winthrop school specifically and then the steel house the winthrop school was um was deemed the path of travel through the ashcroft street doors uh for a handful of you they're familiar with that building because of um being there on a frequent basis um voters go in the ashcroft street doors um and the path to travel for a someone in a wheelchair would be to go around the broad iron fence um although we do have two marked handicapped spots out there but even the path to travel
▶ 19:11 through the building through um um the corridors and then um to the back of the voting and then around was deemed to be um too long um mr troop in his uh in his um memo to um to you indicated that there's a there's a might be possible to do a ramp there um when we were at the site visit um ms simmons murphy seemed to think the topography was as such that she wasn't sure that that would would be feasible. So that's why the Memorial Hall site for the Winthrop Schools 4262 would be an option. And just logically, if we're going to have a voting across the parking lot, we would move 401 and 61, because this is a tough room for folks that have been here on election day. It's a tough room to navigate, and it's
▶ 20:08 almost impossible with spacing and then the steelhouse lastly that is there was no with the exception of the parking which we were able to remediate the DPW felt they would be able to remediate that parking by establishing a temporary handicapped parking space that's just a challenging location and really has always been a challenging location where you have proximity of a exception the school the newest building in the city um you know a handful of blocks away um we as we're reviewing it we we opted to take a look at that as well so that's kind of how we went we went through the um went through the process we're looking at looking at the locations i mean there's elements and it's not it's in my mind it's it's worth noting but it's not you know there there is some there are
▶ 20:59 some reductions in costs uh police details and so forth having multiple um multiple locations multiple precincts at one location either the middle school or um all of ward four and ward um six voting at one location all four precincts at memorial hall and then having two precincts at the um at the at the roosevelt although that's it's it's notable but it's not it's not a reason to do it from my perspective custodial services custodials yeah there's a business you know logistics for dpw set up right down poll workers locations um and and so forth so yeah there's this but again that's our um convenience of cost isn't isn't more important than um the access for the voter so but it does exist if to accept that fact isn't anybody's calculus thank you so the cost
▶ 21:48 Leila Migliorelli: just to clarify because the mask makes it a little bit hard here so you're saying that it is more cost effective to consolidate than it is to operate several different locations okay so access and cost are two of your drivers in your mind for um access cost yes yeah yes yep all right thank you no further questions at this time all right thank you vice chair next up i have counselor eccles thank you um just to kind of go back to 2020 you talked a little bit about it any were there any notable challenges or positive or negative feedback that you kind of got out out of that process it is it was it was tough because it was so different the the I'm very I was surprised the amount of people that took like I said but we
▶ 22:36 when we opened the doors on November the November election I think we already had about 78% of the votes already cast so it's it's a the the the the adoption of the early vote really the adoption of the vote by mail was was that was the big takeaway I think we were all we had some trepidation any change across the across the any change anything will be it here or anywhere else gives rise to potential concerns to my knowledge we didn't have we the communications plan work that we didn't have individuals going to one of the eight former locations and finding and finding uh no not the ability to vote um my understanding was we had we had people lined up queued up to vote on um on the morning of the november election um but that
▶ 23:31 that one line for folks was distant six feet apart were dispersed into 14 precincts and went right through once we got the doors open i think that might have just been excitement to vote um you know i mean i i think that people i'm going to speak for myself only um i feel that the consolidated polling went well um i know i'm i don't i'm not there people have contrary opinions that's that's fine um but um you know what i love the would i love the middle school to be you know a bullseye right in the middle of the city yes uh is it no um it's skewed to the north um the the that corner uh the north uh west corner of the city but um yeah i i believe it um that it went um went pretty well um you know like i said anecdotal we had plenty of compliments um although
▶ 24:18 Jack Eccles: i'm going to well no one reached out to me to say it was we were terrible um but i'm sure there was something to tell that way and then um just to kind of go into 2021 with the new legislation that was signed you know what's early voting and vote by mail look like now given that some things were continued and what would early voting look like with the two options we have the i sort of roughed out the the schedule for early vote and vote by mail and once we have that we fake that yet there we go so there's going to be an order coming before the council uh probably september 13th to for your approval of vote by mail and early voting as required by chapter 152 55 of the acts of 2020 we're looking at four dates they're not hard and fast yet so i hate to
▶ 25:03 really commit towards the end of october um and they would obviously have a weekend and a week night as required um that's kind of where we are it's still all tentative and would they be any different based on the options we choose or no what do you mean by different sorry so if we choose option one of the consolidated four six and one they will not be different no no different nope that was all the questions i had thank you thank you uh counselor Tramontozzi uh thank you i think it's probably fair to say that in this state especially that vote by mail is here to stay and certainly for this upcoming election we're going to have vote by mail early voting And if any experience shows, as demonstrated in the last election,
▶ 25:54 John N. Tramontozzi: there's going to be a good percentage of the population in the city that are going to go that way. I personally, I voted in person the last election at the middle school just to see how it went. And frankly, I was surprised at how well it was presented to the public and how well and organized it was. I think the middle school auditorium is a perfect and ideal place to have a consolidated election. And I have not had any objections. i have not heard any feedback from residents that they were disturbed by it at all and i have to commend you for that being an option in particular with ward one it's it's convenient and that's i think probably why there's not been any major objections in certainly in ward one maybe in other wards we're further away and i cannot get it
▶ 27:07 So would you, did you have any objections at all to the state's investigation findings as to the accessibility of the Winthrop and the Steele House sites in their report? It was pretty, my sense was that, correct me if I'm wrong, it was accepted by the election committee and that's why the proposals came forth because basically it is obvious that there's problems with those two sites, is that fair to say? Yeah, I would say that the steel house is less problematic than Winthrop, but yes, I mean, I don't know if Ms. Murphy ID'd, the element that Ms. Murphy identified was reasonably easy to remedy from the DP, from the dbd it was it was parking spaces more more the the accessible parking right
▶ 28:10 but i think it's it's awkward especially for the residents of the steel house that have that you know people coming in into the lobby area and the inability of the residents to move freely amongst the area. Mr. Hunt, would you care to comment on the steel house in particular? Myself? Yes. Well, the parking lot, I vote there myself, and I always find it kind of walking between the residents and stuff as a problem just to vote, and the doors, people coming in and going through the doors in parking is impossible you know so there's plenty of space at the Roosevelt that's set up for to towards it and to PC so and my understanding is that there would be a shuttle available to the seniors but again I think they're gonna be voting in by mail anybody that
▶ 29:14 wants a ballot can request a ballot and vote nobody's gonna be denied a right to So I, you know, I personally don't have a problem with the consolidation of the voting from the House of the Roosevelt. But more importantly, I think the middle school auditorium is the way to go for this next election. And I think that's something that this council should consider. And I appreciate your time and effort in putting together the options that we have to look at. And I thank you for being present and doing that. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you, Council Chair Montozzi. Councilor McMaster. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good evening. Thank you all for being here. Do we have any type of demographic data that gives us a sense as to who voted in person and who voted through absentee ballots?
▶ 30:10 Shawn M. MacMaster: any did we cross-reference the residential street directory to get a sense of who's coming out and who's voting from home I don't have it by street Russians I Nick was able to run today just some total stats for in terms of vote by mail and vote in person and of the eighteen thousand three hundred and thirty eight thousand vote ballots cast we had nine thousand five hundred thousand seventy seven vote by mail we had four thousand six hundred and ten early vote and then we had four thousand one hundred fifty one on election day at the middle school do I have it but split out by street location no I'm sure we could get that to you well the reason I asked about the demographic data is I think the irony is if we were having this conversation anywhere else in the
▶ 30:58 Shawn M. MacMaster: United States we'd be talking about voter disenfranchisement this is the topic that I raised last time when this matter came before us and I think we have to be cognizant of who if we do go with option one we leave behind whether it's older adults who may have difficulty who may choose by virtue of their age to vote in person that may be their preference they may not want to vote absentee and that's why I asked if we if we have any sense of our older adult population if we can determine through the residential street directory in the voter list you know what that what that looks like in terms of how they voted and then certainly in Ward 5 where I represent naturalized citizens where English may not be their first language and may not have known about
▶ 31:43 Shawn M. MacMaster: the poll consolidation and if we go that route in the future so the voter disenfranchisement issue is something I don't think we can ignore even in a community like Melrose and I do think that if this committee has an appetite to explore option one further considering the far-reaching impacts i would recommend that we have a specific public hearing on consolidating to one location i don't think you know even if a recommendation came out of this committee tonight and if it was pulled up before the full council i think there are a large number of people who would be surprised by a change occurring so suddenly even with you know certainly the requirements of the open meeting law having been met so i just i throw that out there to my colleagues um in terms of any potential uh decision
▶ 32:32 Shawn M. MacMaster: being made tonight if that um you know if there is a recommendation to go with option one uh the consolidation of the polls um you know i do think you know last year was an anomaly in terms of voter turnout i think we can all agree with that it's a it's a positive thing that voter turnout was so high but we were also in the midst of a pandemic we were uh dealing with political arrest the aftermath and aftershocks of the George Floyd murder so I think we have to think about that I think last year was an anomaly and I just be reticent to proceed too hastily with making a decision to consolidate to to one location I'd also be interested in hearing what the ward counselors think with respect to option two I can tell you from you know from my experience
▶ 33:18 Shawn M. MacMaster: what I heard from some Ward five voters was difficult I know there aren't stairs at memorial hall but difficulty getting down to where precinct ward 5 precinct 1 and 2 are located more excuse me at the middle school because it's it was the furthest location so you had older adults and people with mobility issues walking that very long corridor so to me for access reasons for you know for older adults for those who live in my neighborhood for single parents who may have child care issues and it's very convenient just to leave their home and walk over to the lincoln school i'd be inclined personally uh to advocate um that that my ward not change and i know that's not part of this proposal but if with respect to option one
▶ 34:04 Shawn M. MacMaster: it is it's part of the large scale uh you know uh one of the two recommendations which would be the the the most impactful i think for residents so uh just some thoughts on that and i would just ask um you know i i would love to hear the input of of the consulates who represent the two most impacted wards if we do go with option uh two um but i would to the extent that there was an opportunity to have some more demographic data and i'm not sure if that's possible how cumbersome that would be i think that would be of interest right if i if i the chair just to to council McMaster thank you for the the question the the really age is is really the only demographic that we'd be able to have there's no other there's there's no other demographic information the irs
▶ 34:51 um so it would really that's age which is which i think we can do that by precinct and see if there's any we can probably it's get into excel and run some analysis we can we can determine if if certain if if any precinct um specifically or is there any precinct would we you know and you think about the as i indicated before you know you wish it was a bullseye you know you think you think five and seven other are the biggest distances and and would have a larger a larger potential of that so yeah we could that that's something we could we could tease out thank you thank you madam chair thank you councillor Garipay thank you uh thank you all for being here um i'm the council who does represent uh 4-2 which uh which does vote at
▶ 35:30 Mark Garipay: winthrop and i have a couple questions you know in all of the um all the reports we see the main the The main issue is path of, distance of travel that went through the school. Have we looked at another option? Did we do a deep dive and come up with another solution of a temporary ramp and see what we could do? Or is the option consolidate or Memorial Hall? Did we actually look at pricing out a temporary ramp? thank you madam chair thank you committee council thank you uh i did reach out to the uh ramp company they gave us a rough estimate of about 1500 to 1800 uh for the ramp it's a 30-day minimum whether we keep it for a day or whether we keep it for 30 days that's the price the biggest cost
▶ 36:27 Mark Garipay: that is for them to install it properly and then to deconstruct it and to take it away at the winthrop school uh you know a little further down the next question the ramp would go from the top of those three stairs you'd have the landing and then there would be a wedge or something to accommodate that threshold but uh we did price that out it's a roughly a 15 to 1800 cost and that's consistent with i believe what we did at the at the memorial uh at the the memorial hall last election so so if we move it to memorial hall uh there still is a cost to rent the temporary ramp at memorial hall um and the distance and i mr mr troop and i have talked today about the distance he was nice enough to go measure the distance from ashcroft um where
▶ 37:15 the parking lot is with a ramp to the edge of the building and also the distance at memorial hall and could you just tell us what the difference is in the distance between those two yeah Thank You councillor if we were to designate handicap spaces it looks to be the first two spaces in the Ashcroft Street parking lot the distance to the ramp is roughly 90 or so feet you can see we've provided I believe you might have the picture with the distances if you were to go to Memorial Hall temporary parking for spaces would be on Main Street and the furthest space at Memorial Hall would be 80 feet the shortest one right at the end of where the ramp would be is literally just across the sidewalk okay and then
▶ 38:04 Mark Garipay: actually once you get in Memorial Hall it's a longer distance from that door than it would be at the door at Ashcroft so it's kind of the distance between Memorial Hall in Winthrop I would think is pretty similar if we were to move that yeah okay I I would like to see a deeper dive in a little more research and what we could do at Winthrop instead of just picking up the whole precinct and moving it to Memorial Hall I did not support the the one location last time I would not be opposed to support it for this local election I do have concerns that as we come out of COVID whenever that may be that I still worry about the when the whole city comes in it comes into that up a lot for parking if you
▶ 38:56 Mark Garipay: have seniors that are you know in their 70s that don't have handicap placards this it's still a steep steep climb coming up from the high school parking lot and I did bring that up so I I'm not a voting member of this committee but if it comes to the council I would I would support one location because it's a local election right now in November and we don't know what's going on with covert so I would support it with with just the 2020 21 21 election and then do look at it again and reassess everything after that so but without without more information on on Winthrop school I can't I can't necessarily support it at least for the residents of our of 4-2 yeah i'm sorry i want to hit you president thank you
▶ 39:52 Christopher Cinella: madam chair and thank you to all you all your hard work um i went on the tour in may it was a hot day it was but um i would be in support of option one i mean to me it just it it seems like a no-brainer we've already seen it work out in 2020 we've heard the numbers tonight over 80 percent voted by mail or early so we're going to have mail-in ballots again this go-around and then in person i mean excuse me early as well this particular election probably be less turnout because it's not a presidential narrow race so why would we want to open up all the schools higher details and add in all these other costs when we can go to one spot that we've already seen the success so and you know i've heard from a few parents that they don't like the fact
▶ 40:54 Jen Grigoraitis: that and this has happened where folks can wander through the school during the day i mean i know we do have a police detail there but they're not always watching someone if you use the bathroom you know who knows so i would motion to recommend option one um to the full board so we have a motion for um for option one option one for this one election so under pursuant i just want i'm trying to frame it in a way that i was giving so pursuant to mgl chapter 255 of 2020 there's a motion to recommend moving all polling locations for the november 2021 election to the middle school and there's a motion by president senella seconded by counselor eccles am i rephrasing that correctly for everyone okay on discussion council echoes yeah um just as the seconder of the motion i think that especially
▶ 42:00 Jack Eccles: just you know with everything that's going on the fact that the pandemic very much still is happening that we're going into a redistricting year it could make sense to do this kind of one at a time so i do appreciate counselor snella's motion to do it you know for this year and then we can revisit it i also think it's worth mentioning that we actually have done this twice now um with the september primary so i do have full faith in the election staff to be able to execute one consolidated polling place so i'm in favor of this motion thank you counselor i'm just going to take a moment to speak on discussion since my ward is one of i i do represent ward 6 and also actually vote here at city hall i just want to first thank both the Member of the board
▶ 42:40 Jen Grigoraitis: of registrars and the clerk's office and my colleagues i think this has been an incredibly thoughtful discussion and i'm really quite proud of us for having one on a topic that can often be anything but thoughtful um i echo counselor Garipay's concerns about kind of the what is the sort of plus or minus of moving a ramp from winthrop to a ramp from to memorial hall i also have real concerns about setting up a ramp at winthrop which is an active school community the day before the election and the day after and i feel like that is kind of a i think there's a lot of longer term things we need to figure out about voting i very much agree that this year is still not back to quote unquote normal whatever that looks like and there's something to be said for
▶ 43:20 Jen Grigoraitis: consistency and how we did things moving forward i'm not in support of making any type of permanent change without a larger public discussion like councilor mcmaster reference um but i think we all have to really give long pause to the fact that we have already disenfranchised a group of voters which is anyone who couldn't access the winthrop school or city hall for the past however many years we've had folks voting there without it being fully accessible and i feel like that is something we really need to work hard to correct and to me the middle school for this year feels like the best way to do that i also just want this group to be mindful that we just received last week our census data which had our population grow by 3 000 residents which is
▶ 44:01 Jen Grigoraitis: fantastic but that triggers a redistricting process for all of our wards which will be starting i think momentarily um so it feels like we both want more public engagement and i think really want to look at where our ward lines are drawn um before we make decisions about permanent polling locations so i would um be in support of the proposal before us but just wanted to have a chance to add my comments president snell that's one thing to add i would strike out um make permanent and add in an expiration expiration of 20 november after the november expires after the november of 2021 collection correct and then we can have this discussion if we win in november did anyone else on discussion vice chairman yeah i just want to echo everyone else's comments um but
▶ 44:52 Leila Migliorelli: also just add in i think the difference is given the option of mail-in voting really helps to kind of push um the continuation of consolidated polling location at the middle school i think there's some points that counselor mcmaster raised that are pertinent but i think given that the the mail-in voting has been extended that get provides an option for anyone who might find it challenging to get to the middle school and we saw that last time in 2020 so the combination of it working so well the um availability of mail-in voting i think just makes sense for just a continuation in the pandemic and just a continuation for 2021. okay anyone else on discussion okay seeing none at this time we will call the roll yes it's a roll call chair Grigoraitis yes
▶ 45:48 vice chair miguel yes councillor Tramontozzi yes Yes. Councilor McMaster? No. Councilor Eccles? Yes. President Cinella? Yes. Five yeses. Five yeses, so the will of this committee is to move forward with consolidated polling to the middle school for the November 2021 election only, so that is the recommendation that we'll move forward to the full council. We have no other matters before us at this time, i will entertain a motion to adjourn to adjourn listen to adjourn made by president snella seconded by vice chairman Migliorelli all in favor we are adjourned two minutes thank you thank you thank you all I feel like I was here last time. I was over there. Oh, really? She's here. What's up? She's here.