Health, Education & Welfare Committee — 2024-03-25
Attendance
Cal Finocchiaro ; Ward Hamilton ; Manjula Karamcheti ; Leila Migliorelli ; Devin Romanul ; Kimberly Vandiver
Agenda
- Call to Order
- Public Comment
- Appointments/Reappointments
- APPT-2024-22 : Appointment of Philip Hermann to the Council on Aging, 83 East Foster Street, for a three year term, said term to expire the last day of February 2027.
- APPT-2024-23 : Reappointment of David Kourtz, 68 Mooreland Road, to the Melrose Council on Aging for a three-year term, set to expire on the last day of February 2027.
- APPT-2024-24 : Appointment of Nancy Messina, 132 Country Club Road, to the Council on Aging for a three-year term; said term to expire on the last day of February 2027.
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MARCH 25, 2024 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:15 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 Manjula Karamcheti Chair Absent Cal Finocchiaro Vice Chair Present Ward Hamilton Present Devin Romanul Present Kimberly Vandiver Present Leila Migliorelli President, Ex Oficio Present
APPT-2024-22 Appointment Appointment of Philip Hermann to the Council on Aging, 83 East Foster Street, for a three year term, said term to expire the last day of February 2027. Ought to Pass City Council
APPT-2024-23 Appointment Reappointment of David Kourtz, 68 Mooreland Road, to the Melrose Council on Aging for a three-year term, set to expire on the last day of February 2027. Ought to Pass City Council
APPT-2024-24 Appointment Appointment of Nancy Messina, 132 Country Club Road, to the Council on Aging for a three-year term; said term to expire on the last day of February 2027. Ought to Pass City Council City of Melrose Page 1 3/28/2024 12:44 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:03 Cal Finocchiaro: Welcome and good evening. The time is seven 15 on Monday, March 25th. This is a meeting of the Health Education and Welfare Committee. I'm Councilor Foc Yaro, the vice chair. Joining me tonight, our voting members, councilor Hamilton, councilor Romanul and Counselor Vandiver. Also with us are non-voting members, president Mili, Ex-Officio. This takes the place of an attendance roll call and provides notice of the quorum of the record in accordance with open meeting law. This meeting is being recorded and broadcast on our local cable access channel, MMTV, as well as live streamed on MMT MTV's website. It'll be available for future viewing through the City of Melrose website meeting portal As well,
▶ 0:51 Cal Finocchiaro: we are moving on to the public comment portion of the meeting. This is the time where any member of the public may speak to items on the agenda, in person or remotely. At this time, if there are no objections and with unanimous consent, I will open public comment. Seeing no objections, public comment is not open. Do we have anyone here to speak, Anyone online? Uh, there are no participants online at this time. Great. Since we don't not, um, have anyone online or in the chamber to speak, I'll motion by unanimous consent to close public comment. Seeing no objections, public comment is now closed. Tonight on our agenda, we have three appointments. The first appointment is appointment 2024 dash 22.
▶ 1:40 Jen Grigoraitis: Appointment of Philip Herman to the Council on Aging 83 East Foster Street for a three year term, said to expire the last day of February, 2027. And without objection, I will motion to suspend Rule 37 B. This will allow non-cost members to speak at this time. 37 B is now suspended. Thank you. Good Evening, counselors. Madam Chair. Mayor. Here we go. I'm pleased to present to you tonight, um, Phil Herman for consideration to the Council on Aging. And I do also want to acknowledge that we have Erica Brown, our Council on Aging director in the audience to support these appointments in Reappointments. Um, Mr. Herman is a regular at the Milano Center and is an active participant in the painting classes.
▶ 2:33 And he and his partner are, um, aficionados of the arts and are, he really brings a wealth of ideas and sort of a new lens to how we can engage some of our older residents. So I'm really thrilled to have him here tonight, and I'll turn it over to you to say anything. Hi. Hello everyone. Uh, I've been a resident of Melrose for 34 years, and in that period of time I've been able to move into senior activities. So initially when I came into the town, I worked on volunteering on with different organizations. So I like the Human Rights Commission. I was one of the founding members of the recycling committee, and I was the, uh, co-president of the Recycling Committee with Bob Costa. I don't know if you guys remember Bob Costa,
▶ 3:25 but he passed away a few years ago. And, uh, I also tried to do, uh, a lot of stuff once I became active for about 15 years at the senior center, taking watercolor classes and also learning how to do caneing and also doing some ballroom dancing. So I felt that I should give back to the senior center since I spent so many years there trying to learn new activities or new crafts. And I still take, uh, watercolor classes there for with, uh, brother Ed Rice, which is just a wonderful class. And it reaches out to like 30 people every week to learn how to paint. And, you know, we have all kinds of different results. But today I just finished a painting at home and I had to cut it up into scrap paper
▶ 4:21 because I messed it up at the end. But that's what happened. Somebody said, to be an artist means to take risk, and I took too big a risk. Um, you know, I've had some new ideas for implementation at the senior center. One of them is we never had the seniors participate in a Melrose wide art show. And we do have a lot of seniors who have artistic talent. So we were thinking that, uh, Eric and I had been talking about, you know, setting up an art show in the BB and probably also in the Milano Center. And, uh, one of the crazy ideas I had was that maybe we should have a system-wide, uh, game competition. It turns out we have people who come in, you know, and play Scrabble and Checkers and so on.
▶ 5:16 But Wakefield and Stoneham Senior Center have a group of people who play the same games. So we were thinking maybe we could run sort of an Olympiad of all these seniors getting together and playing. So I, about a week ago, I got in front of our game group and I threw it out to them and they started to complain already saying, well, what if they're too good? We won't win any games. They said, well, that's what happens in the Olympics sometimes. So that's, you know, I, I have a, a great sense of humor. At least my wife tells me that when, uh, she's not mad at me. And, uh, as I was telling Erica that, well, they have to put me on this committee because they've already, they've already given me the mug
▶ 6:03 where it says, Melrose Council on Aging on it. And I have it at home. And I'm still trying to figure out how to open it and close it because it has one of these tops, you know, that's difficult to maneuver. But, uh, I think I will enjoy being on this committee. Well, thank you very much. You, um, I don't want to talk too long 'cause I know you have the exciting budget coming up. Well, we, we appreciate your willingness to step forward and be, be a part of the, the Council on Aging and volunteering your Time. Does anybody have any questions for Mr. Herman? Yeah, no questions, but I, I love your enthusiasm and all the ideas, and I think It'll be a great Thank you. Great addition. Any other questions? Okay.
▶ 6:49 Cal Finocchiaro: Um, seeing there are no other questions, what is the will of the committee Motion to Recommend Second Motion to recommend by President me Exofficio seconded by, uh, councilor Vandiver. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. This motion carries will be moved to the next full City Council meeting. Um, Mr. Herman, you do not need to appear at this full council meeting, but of course you're welcome to if you so wish. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you Everyone. Thank you so much. Thank you. Additions taking place. We'll place some bets. Okay. Okay. We are moving on to our second appointment appointment 2024 dash 23 reappointment of David Quartz, 68 Mooreland Road to the Melrose Council on Aging
▶ 7:44 Cal Finocchiaro: for a three year term set to expire on the last day of February, 2027. Uh, this is a reappointment, Mr. Courts has served three years on the Council on Aging. Um, and I believe he's not here tonight, correct? As a re yeah, as a reapp appointee. He doesn't typically attend, but he'd like to sign up for another term. I love that. Thank you. Um, motion to Recommend. Second. Great. We have a motion, uh, to recommend by President re Exofficio seconded by Councillor Vandiver. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. This motion carries. And we'll move to the next full City Council meeting. All right, we are moving on to our third and final appointment of the evening appointment 2024 dash
▶ 8:30 Jen Grigoraitis: 24 appointment of Nancy Messina, 1 32 Country Club Road to the Council on Aging for a three year term. Said to expire on the last day of February, 2027. Ms. Messina is participating remotely this evening While we get the text set up. I'll just, um, highlight for you all that. Um, Ms. Messina has actually served two terms on the board of directors, stepped off per the rules, and is now looking to come back on. She's a very active volunteer at the Milano Center, and obviously brings a wealth of experience and knowledge about what goes on there. So I'm really excited to have her willing to serve a third term. Great. Yeah, I saw that when we, um, on the agenda. That's really great that she's coming back.
▶ 9:42 Okay. There we go. We're just waiting for her to get her camera show up here. Technical difficulties. Ms. Messina, can you hear us? We're having some trouble connecting. Um, can we just call for a two minute recess? Um, we're gonna take a two minute recess. Oh, there she is. There she is. Oh, we did It. Yay. I take that back. We're not gonna take a two minute recess. Okay. Ms. Messina, can you hear us? No, no. I'm sorry. I don't know if you guys can hear me. We Can hear you now. I'm having a terrible time hearing you. We can hear you. I can hear you a little bit now. Yes. I was having a really bad time a minute ago, but go ahead. Yep. You can hear us now. Yes. You, you're coming in and out,
▶ 10:49 Cal Finocchiaro: but I, I get the gist of it. Okay. Well great. Thank you for joining us tonight. Um, we understand that you're coming back on the Council of Aging after being on for three years and taking some time off. And if you wanted to speak to that and just give us, um, you can, whatever you would like to say, you're welcome too. Um, I'm sorry I didn't hear all that, but how about if I, can you guys hear me okay? Yes, We can. Okay. So, um, I'll just tell you a little bit about myself. Um, I was on the Council on Aging, the board for the Council on Aging for two, three year terms. And then you can only do two. So I had to leave. But I've, um, I think you mentioned earlier that I've been a volunteer at the Center for about 10 years.
▶ 11:42 And, um, I enjoyed, I've really enjoyed being there, especially in the last few years with new management. Um, the place hopping, it was, it was a time, time when I used to think maybe I should volunteer somewhere else, but now when I go in, I don't wanna go home. The nice thing about being on the board is so some input that other members of the board might not have. Um, aside from that, I have volunteered. I started my volunteer, uh, in Melrose at the public, the school when my son was, and I Miss Messina. You're, you're, it's, we're breaking up, so we can't hear you clearly. Yeah. Okay. We can hear you now. Um, sorry, I'm having a really bad time. It's Okay. We can hear you now. Okay. So did, did you hear that whole Yes. Spiel?
▶ 13:04 Cal Finocchiaro: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, um, Hopefully if you have any questions, I'll be able to hear them. Yeah. Well, we appreciate you volunteering so much time and coming back to do so again. Um, um, does anybody have any questions for Ms. Messina? A motion to recommend? Okay. Second, we have a motion to recommend by President re Exofficio seconded by Councilor Romanul. Uh, any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. This motion carries and we move to the next city Council meeting. Uh, Mrs. Messina, you do not ha, need to appear at the full city Council meeting, but of course, if you would like to, you are welcome to. Um, so thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate your time And thank you. Sorry about all.
▶ 14:00 Robb Stewart: No worries. And sorry about all the No worries. Thank you. It was great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Alright. Alright. Alright. Thank you. Bye-Bye. Have a great night. So we have now reached the end of our meeting. Um, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Second. Motion to adjourn made by Councilor Romanul. Seconded by Councilor Hamilton. All in favor? Aye. Aye. We are adjourned. Do I, do I do this? Yeah, you can. Good evening. The hour being 7 33 on Monday, March 25th. This call, order for the finance committee. I am the chair Stewart, uh, of the committee. Uh, joining us this evening are counselors, um, Romano, uh, uh, Cameron Chetty, vice Chair, vandiver and President, uh, mcg exofficio.