Health, Education & Welfare Committee — 2022-03-28
Attendance
Christopher Cinella ; Jack Eccles ; Manjula Karamcheti ; Shawn M. MacMaster ; Robb Stewart ; Ryan Williams
Agenda
- Call to Order
- Public Comment
- Orders
- ORDER-2022-82 : Appointment of George Bibilos, 264 Grove Street, to the Historical Commission for a term to expire on the last day of February 2023.
- ORDER-2022-83 : Re-appointment of Charles Harak, 14 Country Club Road, to the Melrose Housing Authority for a three-year term; said term to end on the first Monday of March 2025.
- ORDER-2022-84 : Appointment of Kimberly Marolda, 811 Franklin Street, to the Historical Commission for a term to expire on the last day of February 2024.
- ORDER-2022-85 : Appointment of Thomas J. Champoux, 87 Crescent Avenue, to the Historical Commission for a term to expire on the last day of February 2025.
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MARCH 28, 2022 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:10 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 Jack Eccles Chair Present Manjula Karamcheti Vice Chair Present Shawn M. MacMaster Present Robb Stewart Present Ryan Williams Present Christopher Cinella President, ex oficio Present Non voting members present include Councilor Obremski and Councilor Garipay.
ORDER-2022-82 Appointment Appointment of George Bibilos, 264 Grove Street, to the Historical Commission for a term to expire on the last day of February 2023. Ought to Pass Health, Education & Welfare Committee
ORDER-2022-83 Appointment Re-appointment of Charles Harak, 14 Country Club Road, to the Melrose Housing Authority for a three-year term; said term to end on the first Monday of March 2025. Ought to Pass Health, Education & Welfare Committee
ORDER-2022-84 Appointment Appointment of Kimberly Marolda, 811 Franklin Street, to the Historical Commission for a term to expire on the last day of February 2024. Ought to Pass Health, Education & Welfare Committee
ORDER-2022-85 Appointment City of Melrose Page 1 3/30/2022 2:20 PM Minutes Health, Education & Welfare Committee March 28, 2022 Appointment of Thomas J. Champoux, 87 Crescent Avenue, to the Historical Commission for a term to expire on the last day of February 2025. Ought to Pass Health, Education & Welfare Committee City of Melrose Page 2 3/30/2022 2:20 PM
Transcript
▶ 9:35 Jack Eccles: and Garipay this provides a notice of quorum for the record in accordance with the open meeting law this meeting is being recorded and broadcast on our local cable access channel mmtv as well as live streamed on the mmtv website and available for future viewing through the city of melrose meetings portal without objection i'd like to open public comment this is the portion of the meeting where any member of the public can come forward and speak on any item on tonight's agenda are there any Member of the public wishing to speak at this time mr bennett if you come forward and say your name and address thank you i'm jim bennett of 45 wentworth road thank you very much uh chair eccles president sanella uh other counselors i'm here tonight to celebrate a
▶ 10:17 great moment in the history of our city's historical commission in a few moments you will have an opportunity to vote to affirm the appointments of three new Member of the commission this is the largest number of candidates to come on board the commission at one time in many years each of them will bring unique talents to the work of the commission and i thank mayor broder for bringing them forward for nomination tonight i will leave him to tell you all about them i will just encourage you to affirm their nominations i would also take this moment to encourage each member of city council to take some time over the next few weeks to re-familiarize yourselves with the historical commission and what it can offer the city. With the approval
▶ 10:57 of these candidates and the election of a new commission chair slated to take place at the commission's next meeting, a reset button is effectively being hit on the commission's work. The timing could not be better. Last week you all voted on whether to adopt the city's housing production plan. As I do not need to tell you, though perhaps I need to tell the camera, this is a highly detailed document with many discrete policy options that will have real impacts on the built fabric of our city now in some communities historical commissions have been pigeonholed as reactionary anti-development forces and to be fair there are some places where that has been the case here in melrose though i believe this newly reconstituted historical
▶ 11:38 Jack Eccles: commission will be able to act as a steadfast and true partner to both the administration and to this council as you wrestle with weighty questions of how to create the melrose of the future without destroying that melrose which is worth preserving in closing i thank you all for your service to our city and i wish you wisdom and resolve as you face all of the decisions you will be called to make for our beloved city in the months ahead thank you thank you any other Member of the public wishing to speak anyone without objection we will close public comment and come to the first order on tonight's agenda order 2022-82 appointment of george biblos 264 grove street to the historic commission for term to expire on the last day of february 2023 i
▶ 12:28 Paul Brodeur: believe we have the nominee and the mayor here with us tonight is there a motion to suspend the the rules second motion to spend the rules made by President Sinella seconded by Councillor Stewart all in favor aye all opposed passes good evening Member of committee and other Member of the council we got a lot of good people coming before you tonight starting with Mr. Biblios it was his birthday yesterday isn't that correct it was yeah let's make it a good night let's make it a night for Mr. Biblios um so his term would expire the the last um day of February in 2023 just for your your consideration so Mr. Biblios has lived here in Melrose since the 70s so just a couple years maybe less than me has lived on West Wyoming Linden Road Vinton and Grove Street
▶ 13:30 Paul Brodeur: When I had a chance to meet with Mr. Biblios, who applied in reaction to the solicitation on the internet, he talked a lot about the Melrose downtown and highlighted, as we all do, Victorian lighting and the housing stock and our neighborhood. He clearly values particularly our school history, our historical architecture, including the buildings right around us the public library this building of course memorial hall in his professional capacity mr biblios has worked for the commonwealth i believe for 30 years yep yep at uh dcam which is um asset management and um really with for the last probably 20 years or so has been a leader in various capacities in Melrose, probably most interesting for
▶ 14:29 Paul Brodeur: you all, the Friends of the Public Library. He's also, I'm not sure how many folks know this because it wasn't included in the materials, but Mr. Biblios is an administrator and contributed to the New England Observer, which is a Facebook group dedicated to New England past, present, and future, but I would suggest having looked at it on several occasions with a heavy accent on the past i am very confident that mr biblios will be an important leader on the commission and i offer him for your consideration any counselors just briefly i guess first of all i'd like to thank uh thank the mayor for um for nominating me for this uh position i i saw the post on facebook from the melrose historical commission
▶ 15:25 and uh as the mayor said i've lived here since we moved here in the early 70s you know it's a city i've grown up in i care a lot about great housing stock i remember when they did the victorian lighting downtown and whatnot so definitely a lot of interest to me so when i saw that came up it definitely uh resonated with me if you will and my kids are getting a little older now i'll be sending my third one off to college so yeah he's looking for a few other things to do so i know yeah yeah yeah bankruptcy pending but um but uh no i again i appreciate the opportunity and uh you know i i hope that the uh the council will see fit or the committee i'm sorry we'll see fit to uh support my candidacy so thank you very much thank you any counselors vice chair carm treaty
▶ 16:16 Manjula Karamcheti: uh mr biblios more than anything i just wanted to say thank you for answering the call to serve on the historic commission um really appreciate the energy and effort um that you'll put into it i get just curious um what are you most excited about in terms of being on the historic commission well you know like i said i've lived in the city for almost probably over 50 years and i think an opportunity to maybe tangibly may have an impact uh on our city uh you know like i said the great housing stock old housing stock i've got an old big old victorian the downtown and to be involved with that maybe to have uh you know strike that balance between preserving the history of the town but make you know the city also needs to move forward you know how do you strike that balance
▶ 17:03 i'm not saying i have the silver bullet but you know um i i i look forward to being part of that discussion hopefully so at least you still have a victorian house i can't say i do it could be i'm thinning it out slowly though yeah yeah with the kids getting older but uh yeah well i can tell you love the city and you want to see it grow and develop in ways that preserve um what we love about it so again thank you for stepping up thank you appreciate it president snow i just want to make a motion to recommend his appointment just to be those disappointments made by president snella to recommend for passage seconded by councillor williams all in favor aye aye all opposed that's it thank you mr mayor thank you thank you all appreciate it all right second
▶ 17:53 Jack Eccles: item on our agenda is order 2022-83 reappointment of charles harak 14 country club roads the melrose housing authority for a three-year term said term to end on the first monday of march 2025. this is a reappointment so i don't believe the nominee is with us president sneller seeing this as a reappointment i would make a motion to uh recommend um motion made by president snella seconded by vice chair carm chady all in favor aye all opposed third item on our agenda order 2022-84 appointment of kimberly marolda 811 franklin street to the historical commission for a term to expire on the last day of february 2024. mr roll is with us hi so again uh Member of the committee and uh and other counselors uh
▶ 18:52 Paul Brodeur: miss marolda doesn't quite uh have the roots that mr biblios does but i think you'll find she's still a fantastic choice uh she too came uh reached out to us about a uh about a position on the historic commission her term would expire in february of 2024. kim has lived in melrose since 2016 but interestingly and she can tell you this for herself but she grew up in rural wisconsin which is a little bit of a different perspective than i think a lot of folks in and around melrose have in terms of her educational background she graduated from the university of wisconsin with a get this with a triple bachelor of arts in anthropology classical history and ethnic studies she spent a decade in milwaukee immersed in historical museum studies and during that time
▶ 19:47 Paul Brodeur: she developed a passion for researching presenting and archiving archiving items items and stories of historical uh significance it's like she's quite frankly picture like she had in mind years ago in wisconsin that someday she would move to boston or the boston suburbs and then seek a position on the melrose historic commission she is dedicated to building cultures that value people and promotes progress and productivity something she developed developed over a 13 plus year career in human resources i'm very excited that she stepped forward and i offer a field consideration I'm just really excited to be here. This is my first venture into any sort of City Hall participation in turn other than voting of course, but
▶ 20:37 When I saw that one of my favorite pages that I follow on Facebook in addition to old-time Melrose and a variety of other similarly themed pages But I was really excited because I have a three and a half year old son who's starting to become significantly more self-sufficient and it's a huge breath of fresh air for me to reclaim my identity as well as time and I really want to make sure that I'm using it wisely having a child can really change your life and your perspective on things and the frivolous nature of just sitting around on your couch doing nothing staring at your phone at the Facebook pages it really made me realize I want to do something more with my time that matches my interests and my strengths and I feel as if I could contribute a
▶ 21:23 of that to this particular commission and i hope you guys feel the same and i would note that as everyone here i think is apparent with the exception of chairman eccles and the fact that you have a a three and a half year old that you can even moderately describe as semi-self-sufficient today was not a model day of that feather in the cat that's for sure yeah um he knows how to push a lot of uh digital buttons and if that's what self-sufficiency is this day he's got it down pat so councilor williams i have two questions uh where in rural wisconsin northwoods it's about two hours south of lake superior and about two and a half hours to the east of the twin cities so the biggest town we were a town of eight thousand and the nearest town was an hour away
▶ 22:14 Ryan Williams: that was thirty thousand and that was the biggest town in all of northern wisconsin what time was What town was that? I'm sorry? What town was that, the big one? Eau Claire. Okay. All right. I happen to spend my entire youth basically in the Dubuque area. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. Got it. My great grandmother lived in Platteville, Wisconsin, so not too far from Dubuque. Very familiar with that area. Yeah. It's good to see another Midwesterner stepping up. That's right. We need more of them. We're good. I know. I wanted to ask a substantive question about what you think the role of your passion for archiving and archaeology, I'm sorry, anthropology would be. How would you bring that into the Historical Commission?
▶ 22:51 One of the things that I found that was kind of a subset of the anthropological research and study was going through and educating yourself and then sharing that education with other people and really taking the kind of gleam off of this, these intangible, kind of intimidating, overwhelming, somewhat insignificant to many people aspects of our history and reframing that narrative to show that, hey, this stuff is actually really interesting And it's really cool, and it's really applicable to your daily life in ways that you may not even realize, and being able to work really closely with the various education departments of the two museums in Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Milwaukee Art Museum, I worked very, very closely with our education teams, and being able to watch certain elements come to life, not only from an adult perspective with seminars, but also from a children's perspective with their weekend classes and their summer-long, week-long programs.
▶ 23:44 Jack Eccles: being able to bring it to life in a way that made sense to people it made it really valuable to me and allowed me to take a lot more pleasure in diving even deeper into things and learning different ways that it can be presented to people so they can learn to value it and protect it and cherish it just as much as I do thank you Thank You councillor Williams before we vote I would also like to say I think that the Melrose Historical Commission Facebook is probably one of the better educational resources out there what is the will of the committee at this time vice chair come to motion to approve second motion approved by vice chair Karim Chetty seconded by council Williams on favor all right all opposed congratulations
▶ 24:32 Paul Brodeur: energy and enthusiasm to the historic commission oh no problem to see what you come up with it's exciting it's exciting guys thank you so much the final item on tonight's agenda order 2022-85 appointment of thomas j shampoo 87 crescent ave to the historical commission for a term to expire on the last day of february 2025. mr shampoo is with us mary brader uh last but certainly not least is Tom shampoo Tom did not go up here but he is a what would now be called UMass Dartmouth grad and gosh came to Melrose probably about 20 certainly 20 plus years ago raised two kids along with his life Linda they are both proud graduates of Melrose high school that's not what brings Tom here today or makes him a good choice. Tom has over 20 years of experience in nonprofit marketing
▶ 25:33 Paul Brodeur: and communications with a particular focus in the library and museum sector. He had a previous position at the New England Historic Genealogical Society and certainly values and understands the role of genealogy and family history in the importance of it to it to individuals lives but also to the community as a whole as a whole you probably also know him as one of the co-hosts of let's talk Melrose Melrose so maybe haven't seen the face but you certainly heard the voice over the time over the time he has been involved with that Tom also volunteers for friends of the fellows doing hiking guides and leadership in that area and I think that That is particularly important because an important part of the history of Melrose and
▶ 26:27 Paul Brodeur: the history of this area is the natural history and how that impacts all the other things that we do, that we need to think about, that were thought about in the past and what drives some of our challenges really going forward. He is a trained communications professional that would certainly help with the mission of making sure a greater and greater slice of the Melrose population knows what's going on with the historic commission, continue to, you know, grow the involvement of the general public. I'm very excited to offer Tom's candidacy. Thank you, Paul. Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody. I will add that there are many things that appeal to me about this opportunity. I'm excited to be, as Paul mentioned, I have two kids who are now in college, and so I'm
▶ 27:18 I'm looking for a way to give back more often than I was able to before. My background is in nonprofit communications, and I spent a lot of years, as Paul mentioned, immersed in history and the stories of individuals, and I really feel most strongly connected to this idea of telling stories, our own stories. Mine happens to include an Italian grandmother on my mother's side, came over at six years old from Sicily with $25 in her pocket because she had to have money, and she went to Lawrence worked in a mill raised her family my dad's side an irish immigrant who came over at 13 years old by himself found his way to lynn worked in the shoe factory for a bunch of years was actually in the spanish-american war served this country came back served his new country came back raised
▶ 28:07 a family and then at some point this italian side and this irish side met and here i am today And the thing that I really value about my experience and my work in history and in genealogy is that these stories are both completely unique to ourselves and also shared with everybody else. My story is unique to me, but it's also very similar to everybody else's stories. And so I really find pleasure and joy in helping people connect to the stories of how we got to where we are and who we are. The fabric that we create together because of those stories and so I really really value that and I think that the work on the Historical Commission would allow some of that to go forward. Thank you. Mr. Shampoo any counselors at this time
▶ 28:56 Paul Brodeur: Presence no, I would just make a motion to recommend Motioned by president snow seconded by vice chair Karim Chidi all in favor aye opposed seeing none that was the last order on tonight's agenda is there a motion to adjourn if if the committee decides in its wisdom that they would like to continue to work on the suspension of the rules and hear from mr. Harrick mr. your reappointment was already approved yeah but I would suggest Mr. Herrick has over 40 years as a lawyer working in consumer advocacy particularly in regulated industries utilities in particular has solved has served on the on the Housing Authority for a number of years has served in other very significant volunteer capacities directed at anti-poverty
▶ 29:56 efforts and I would be happy to offer them if you have any if you have any questions about about mr harker's qualifications i would not i would just be would hate to see that go by if y'all did have any questions if you if you have anything to say feel free to come forward if not we can adjourn yeah is good president snell and vice chair i'm sure you would draw your motion just to hear from the nominee briefly we already voted for adjourning did we vote we voted oh i will withdraw my motion to adjourn so we can listen to you oh you vote okay council williams sorry we would drop all right um well i'd wish to say first of all it's an honor um to serve on the housing authority i think we all know what a serious
▶ 30:55 problem melrose has in having enough affordable housing at least at the housing authority we have 300 units in the steelhouse in the mccarthy house we have hundreds of other units through section 8 and we try hard to think about how we might obtain more housing but without substantial federal or state assistance it is a tremendous challenge I I have tremendous respect for our Housing Authority director Jim Holt I think he does an absolutely superb job he is a real professional and he's just good at keeping the housing the way we would want it to be kept and I'll just had one thing that i'm personally proud of while i've been on the housing authority um i led the negotiations to get us a solar contract so we will be actually getting real solar electricity from a
▶ 31:46 Paul Brodeur: specific project that's being developed right now i again i apologize for being late i very much appreciate that the mayor supports my position on the housing authority i would note that that there's kind of there's two pieces to public housing and mr eric knows this really better than anyone there is creation of units which he mentioned but there is maintenance and upkeep of the current housing stock and that's something that the housing authority is also very involved with and uh as he stated can be a bit of a challenge trying to navigate the somewhat byzantine world of rehab funding um but we got some real great folks working on it yeah and i should also give credit not only to jim holt the executive director but ellen connolly our chair
▶ 32:30 who also does a really good job and so it's a pleasure to serve and i'm glad i got reappointed even when i wasn't here congratulations congratulations mr hart now is there another motion to adjourn well i just wanted to say thank you mr herrick for serving um and being willing to continue to serve um with the housing authority and i guess i'm just curious what keeps you coming back no it is part the mayor and when I joined the board I had a long conversation with mr. Holt and you know I didn't know him at the time it's it really is a privilege to serve with someone I've been for I don't know 10 or 15 years I was a lawyer for the Mass Union of public housing tenants I was often on the other side with other housing authorities that I found less
▶ 33:30 sympathetic to the tenants more just interested in running the place and not having problems I mean one example of what a great guy he is he has gone out of his way to try to bring tenants to our housing authority meetings and when I represented the mass unit of public housing tenants had a fight with some directors to give tenants the chance to speak at housing authority board meeting so um i'm winding down my professional career and this is one of the things that i'm sticking with well thank you you're very welcome all right motion to adjourn sorry to keep things held up no worries motion to adjourn by vice chair carm chidi seconded by council williams all in favor aye aye opposed awesome we're adjourned