Health, Education & Welfare Committee — 2022-05-05
Attendance
Christopher Cinella ; Jack Eccles ; Manjula Karamcheti ; Shawn M. MacMaster ; Robb Stewart ; Ryan Williams
Agenda
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MAY 5, 2022 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:00 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 Absent Robb Stewart Present Ryan Williams Present Christopher Cinella President, ex oficio Present
ORDER-2022-107 Appointment Appointment of Carolyn Federoff, 108 Ashland Street, to the Affordable Housing Trust for a three-year term. Ought to Pass
ORDER-2022-111 Appointment Appointment of Alaine Breen, of 18 Woodcrest Ave, to the City of Melrose Commission on Disability. Ought to Pass City of Melrose Page 1 5/9/2022 11:11 AM
Transcript
▶ 0:01 Jack Eccles: 7 o'clock on Thursday, May 5th. This is a meeting of the Health, Education, and Welfare Committee. I'm Councilor Eccles, the Chair. Joining me are Vice Chair Karamcheti and voting Member, Councilors Williams and Stewart, and President Cinella, ex officio. this provides a notice of quorum for the record in accordance with the open meeting law this meeting is being recorded and broadcast in our local cable access TV channel mm TV as well as live streamed on the MMT website and available for future viewing through the city of Melrose meeting portal first we're on our agenda tonight is public comment and without objection I will open public comment there any Member of the public wish to speak in any item on
▶ 0:48 Jack Eccles: tonight's agenda so this is the Health Education and Welfare Committee that will be on the legal and legislative committee agenda at 720 thank you anyone virtually perfect the first order on tonight's without objection I will close public comment um the first order on tonight's agenda is order 2022-107 appointment of carolyn federoff 108 ashland street to the affordable housing trust for a three-year term i believe we have ms federoff and mayor broder with us tonight if there is no objection we can suspend the rules to hear from the nominee and mayor broder floor is yours thank you mr. chairman thank you the Member of the committee as you know through the wisdom of this board and the administration we have made we established an affordable housing trust and
▶ 1:55 Paul Brodeur: we are now you know have the opportunity to to finally fill out the entire membership of the trust and start to put some of the dollars and more importantly the energy of the folks that are serving on the trust forward to make a real difference in a very challenging marketplace that I don't need to tell you all about you know quite a bit about it it is my privilege and honor to be here today to present miss Fedorov to you for consideration for that final trustee spot she has worked literally for decades in the area of affordable housing and she has done it in with an eye towards fairness with an eye towards access and she also happens to be a very accomplished lawyer that knows her way around HUD which for
▶ 2:48 Paul Brodeur: those of you who don't know what I did is the federal housing and urban development departments cabinet level secretariat within President Biden or within the president's cabinet. So she knows a whole lot about a whole lot of things that are related to this. I have a whole bunch more written down, but I think you know some of that story. So I'm gonna turn it over to the pro. Well, I thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, and thank you Member of the council for inviting me. My name is Carolyn Federoff, and I am honored to be asked to be a trustee for the Melrose Affordable Housing Trust. Moreover, I am excited by the purpose that is set forth in the charter and by the Melrose Housing Production Plan.
▶ 3:39 You know from my cover letter that I have 30 years of experience with the Department of Housing and Urban Development as a housing development attorney. My favorite was affordable housing, whether it was housing for the elderly, people for disabilities. I was the housing attorney responsible for the very first affordable housing for persons with AIDS in the country. There were many changes that we had to make to the standard program in order to accommodate this unique constituency. I also worked with cities and towns, communities on the use of their community development block grant funding for affordable housing. So I really enjoy looking at the possibilities, looking at how programs can work together
▶ 4:42 in order to further affordable housing. Now what's not reflected in my cover letter and might be a surprise is that I also spent more than 20 years as the lead lobbyist for the HUD Employees Union, and so I had the opportunity to work on Capitol Hill to preserve, expand, defend housing programs, and that opportunity as a union activist to be able to pursue and protect affordable housing was also i have to say frustrating but joyful at the same time so for me the pursuit of vibrant communities open to all it wasn't a vocation it wasn't a career it was a passion and i am excited to pursue that passion in my home community and if there are any questions i'd be happy to answer them i'm going to preempt possibly a question because um is fedor referred to community development
▶ 6:05 Manjula Karamcheti: block grants? Just so you know, we don't get those. We don't fit the community profile to get those. Vice Chair Carmichael. Ms. Federoff, I don't have any questions for you from looking at your resume and your cover letter and hearing from you. 30 years at HUD is most impressive and you clearly will understand the complexities and just what it takes to make affordable housing happen in melrose and i just want to say thank you so grateful that you've applied for this and are willing to share your passion and expertise with us because it is an area that it's complicated it requires people like you with knowledge expertise and wisdom to to support us in moving forward so thank you thank you very much counselor williams hi thanks for being with us um i loved
▶ 7:07 Ryan Williams: reading your cover letter i actually spent five years fundraising for affordable housing senior housing housing for people with disabilities i raised a lot of money for one of the first and the pilot of the veterans supportive housing program in chicago that was co-funded by hud and the va and i also did a lot of work with hoplaw with the housing opportunities for people with AIDS in Chicago so I love hearing you talk about all those different elements because in Melrose we often talk a lot about affordability we don't clearly define what we mean by affordability affordable housing there's the HUD definition there's the kind of spiritual definition of affordable housing in your letter you talk about things like zoning neighborhoods
▶ 7:48 Ryan Williams: sustainability funding of course land acquisition all these things that are a part of the affordable housing process layering the financing right this was bringing back a lot of memories for me so what do you think the role of the trust will be in the upcoming discussions around zoning housing housing production in Melrose what's your what do you think the ambition is of the Member of the trust to be a part of that conversation I think that pursuant to the Charter that we are a resource for the council that we under the Charter we in fact have to come back to the council and seek the council and the mayor's permission in certain instances we cannot exercise that power unilaterally but but beyond being a resource I hope that we'll actually have
▶ 8:53 Jack Eccles: the opportunity to come to the council and say hey we've got this idea what do you think you know what is that something that the council could get behind that you think would be a value to our community that sounds great let's get to it thank you what is the will of the committee now make a motion to to approve second motion to recommend for passage by council williams seconded by vice chair karam chidi all in favor all right all opposed congratulations miss federoff it will be voted on in our next full council meeting on the 16th thank you very much thank you very much for your support much appreciated the next order on our agenda tonight is um order sorry one second and I clicked away from the link.
▶ 9:53 Paul Brodeur: Order 2022-111, Appointment of Elaine Breen of 18 Woodcrest Ave to the City of Melrose, Commission on Disability. Believe, do we have the nominee with us this evening? You can step forward. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, again, Member of the committee, other counselors, so this is kind of a bad news, good news situation. One of our Member of the Commission on Disability who has family Member living with disability, and that was how she engaged with the Commission, is no longer able to serve. Paula Weiner is stepping away. She has been an incredible resource for the community, quite frankly, far beyond her service to the Commission on Disability.
▶ 10:54 Paul Brodeur: And we will certainly miss her and wish her well, but I'm delighted to say that Ms. Breen has stepped forward to take over that spot and serve out that term and hopefully serve for many more years. She also comes to us, she's a Null Rosian for many years, I'm not sure, I'm very cautious about saying lifelong. There was a gap in there, a 12 year gap. Try to be, but she is the parent of an adult living with autism and brings a whole host of experience having raised that child and now facing what a lot of parents face as you get into the world beyond the city's educational responsibility, you may have heard the phrase turning 22, and that implicates a lot of important things for Member of our community,
▶ 11:49 Paul Brodeur: including housing and access to employment. we have someone that by by profession as a as a as a cpa as a community member as a parent and as an experienced advocate will do an outstanding job with the work of the commission and i offer her for your consideration that's all you did you didn't tell me i was going to have to make a statement anyway um thank you um for having me um i've been had an eye on this commission it's kind of still fledgling right um but i've had an eye on it to see what what it was and you know it's a brand new brand new thing and so my perspective comes from um a parent of a child with autism and having to have to advocate for him pretty much all the time every day from the time
▶ 12:46 he was three and a half he's now 20. um he had a wonderful ex in general a wonderful experience in the morals public schools it was up and down year by year depending on what was going on but most especially in the high school was wonderful he is now part-time in the postgrad program in the high school three days a week at the macy program at salem state university which is a partner funded by between the school district and the commonwealth of massachusetts so that has been fantastic for him it's a two-year program and what we face now as parents watching these kids come through become very integral parts of the community become very comfortable in their community you know build the skills that they need to to be
▶ 13:36 very active Member of the community um you know once they hit 22 and the school district responsibility ends um it's very unnerving to see the the gap that's facing you and the amount of time that i had to spend learning about what the district was going to provide what you know we as a family felt responsible to provide how to adjunct all those things i mean the school district isn't going to do everything it shouldn't do everything right and so as as a family we've got to pick up that responsibility well now it's a whole new learning process with other state agencies and nothing's guaranteed nothing it's all funded funding related budget related and yay these things would be nice but money's not there so sorry um so really trying
▶ 14:28 to face the fact that my so my son's 20 he's very enthusiastic about working he's very enthusiastic about learning um he has significant verbal expressive language struggles so how do you convey that to an employer to a landlord to um anybody in the community that you know a doctor anybody he has to deal with the bus driver the uber driver he's mastered uber completely to get back and forth to salem state but you know so it's great um so that's kind of where my so my interest really lies in that young adulthood and how to continue to push them forward to continue to be active and vibrant Member of the community that they know so well um you know and there are i know a host of kids around his age that he's come up through that have either similar presentations
▶ 15:19 or different presentations that kind of all facing the same thing i feel like that positions me really well to advocate overall I joked with Paul when we met that I was doing DEI before it was fashionable because I had to and you know what I'm seeing with that initiative with the woman whose name escapes me now that just spoke before me with affordable housing there are a lot of moving parts right now that ready to just click right into place work together and that's really exciting because what the disability commission is going to do can dovetail really well with what affordable housing is going to do with what this subcommittee is doing um i feel like it's a really good time here to really
▶ 16:13 Manjula Karamcheti: you know have us as advocates and advisors um be able to produce some really really positive things Vice Chair Karamcheti? Well, thank you so much for applying to be on the Disabilities Commission. And thank you for sharing with us your story, your background, and just your experiences. Given everything that you know and everything that you've gone through, and this isn't like a stressful question in any way, shape, or form, I'm just interested in like, are there things already that you would love to see the Commission on Disabilities do to support youth who are sort of transitioning out of the school system and in into like being more adult Member of the community are there things you already have on your mind things you would like to see so it's a
▶ 17:11 two-part answer because yes however I don't have enough experience knowing what the commission is doing yet to effectively answer that question but um and i've and you know i'm a new young adult parent right so i you know i i know what i see as needs but um but my what i'd like to somehow work on in spearhead and this might be a pipe dream i don't know we'll see how how much bandwidth I really have but I have this vision of an inclusive partially supported housing model that would allow for a mixed population of people some with disabilities some without disabilities different kinds of disabilities and the support needs could be met by the other people that live there that aren't disabled and there would be some kind of a pricing model
▶ 18:10 and with that I mean I know this is a big thing right there's a lot that could go into having to make this happen so whether we could or not I don't know but but then allow for you know have that kind of be a little community within a community have that support for like social activities and you know Brian remember it's time to get to work or you know what time do you have to set your alarm for for tomorrow or you stuff like that whatever the little need might be so that's really that's kind of where what I'm thinking about he you know he's got a couple of part-time jobs so the flip side of that is how to convey that you know this population of people is very effective and has a lot to offer as
▶ 19:02 Manjula Karamcheti: as far as being in the workplace, volunteering, whatever the case might be. So that's, I guess, sort of an answer for you. Yeah, absolutely, that's a great answer. Something that you said I just wanted to note that I really appreciate, sort of, your thinking about how different organizations and groups and committees can collaborate together to make some of these things happen. And I think it has to. Yeah. that's the only way things will happen yeah right I appreciate that model so thank you for mentioning it council Williams I'm spring thanks for being with us um I my colleague asked the most important question which is what do you want to do and you gave a phenomenal answer don't undercut pipe dreams
▶ 19:54 Ryan Williams: because eventually one of the pipes is gonna lead somewhere and come out somewhere I think it's really great that you're bringing some of the neurodivergent experience into this council into this Commission as a person who is like mildly neurodivergent myself and I hear you when you say time to get up get and set your alarm I have 15 alarms on my phone because I just unconsciously turn them all off one after the other I just think it's great I think your ideals are great I think your goals are great it takes a lot of strength and courage to come out from a challenging situation and want to engage in public service to try and make things better not just for yourself but for others so I really applaud and respect you for that and at this time I'd like