The Medford City Council voted 6-0 Tuesday night, November 10, to approve a joint press release that puts the cost of a new Medford High School “just below $700 million,” after more than an hour of public comment in which most of the residents who came to the podium or logged on to Zoom said the number is more than the city can afford. The vote carried two amendments from Councilor George Scarpelli: add the city assessor, the finance director and outside financial experts to the task force working on the funding plan, and build a way for residents to send questions and get answers before the February 2 meeting where the tax impact is supposed to be revealed.
The same meeting produced a flat denial from the owner of Cataldo Ambulance Service that his company is about to be sold, a second deferral of the mayor’s request to restore $269,295.81 to the Law Department budget, and a decision to send the Fire Department’s drone policy to committee rather than act on it. Councilor Liz Mullane was absent. The account below comes from the city’s recording of the meeting and the 72-page agenda packet; the council’s preview of the agenda is linked at the end.
The high school: “there is no number right now”
Council President Zac Bears, who sits on the Financial Task Force with Vice President Emily Lazzaro, Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn, Chief of Staff Nina Nazarian and School Committee members Jenny Graham and Mike Mastrobuoni, laid out the calendar the release describes. The task force has been meeting with the superintendent, the city assessor, the finance director and bond counsel. Suffolk Construction, the newly hired construction manager, is turning the scope the building committee approved October 6 into schematic drawings. On February 2, 2027, Bears said, the council and School Committee will meet in the council chamber “to have one true answer to what is this project going to cost the city and what is it going to cost the taxpayers.” A council vote to put a debt exclusion on the ballot would follow in early March, and the public vote would be in June 2027.
Bears spent the most time on how the city might soften the bill. Beyond the private fundraising and the state and federal grants the schools have applied for, he pointed to two sources the task force is studying: new property tax growth from development, and the city’s pension payments. Medford has been putting roughly $13 million a year into fully funding its pension system, he said, and is on track to finish in fiscal 2033, seven years ahead of the state’s 2040 deadline. “If some portion of that could be allocated to assist, that could be meaningfully impactful on the cost to the taxpayer,” he said, adding that it would be a multi-year source, not a one-time one. He also said the council is looking at whether the city can expand its property tax exemptions for seniors, veterans and residents with disabilities.
Scarpelli said he would support the release if the council added his two motions. He asked that the task force be expanded to include “financial minds” from the community, with the assessor and finance director formally on it, and suggested asking Tufts University and local bank officers to take part, as a neighboring community had done before its own override. He also asked for a built-in way for people to get answers at the joint meetings. “There is no number right now,” he said, describing phone calls in which residents repeat figures from one side or the other. Lazzaro noted that the city’s chief financial officer attends nearly every task force meeting and that Mastrobuoni is Somerville’s budget director. Councilor Justin Tseng seconded both amendments and said the approach gives residents “clarity, ambition and prudence.” Bears accepted them and said he would bring them to the mayor and the School Committee, which he said approved the release the night before.
Then the public spoke. Robert Carney of Hicks Avenue, on Zoom, said he could not support the project at its current cost and asked the council to rescind the resolution. He compared the Medford figure, which he put at just below $501,000 per student for about 1,395 students, with the Triton Regional request for proposals at $250 million to $300 million, Lexington’s $660 million high school for 2,400 students and Revere’s $493 million for about 2,450. A West Medford resident said taxpayers would be financing about $500 million, that the assessor’s earlier modeling had suggested an increase of $1,000 or more a year for the average bill, and that the building committee had refused to drop items such as a 1,500-square-foot teen health center he priced at $2.4 million and an 800-square-foot central office conference room. He said the total should be $600 million or less.
A South Medford resident who graduated from the school in the 1980s said she had read the building committee’s documents and found no study of what Medford taxpayers can afford; she compared the choice to buying a practical stove instead of a luxury one. A physician who said she has cared for high school and college students for 35 years questioned the size of the proposed student health clinic. A Winford Way resident said the 24-member building committee, 14 of them voting, is dominated by people who hold city positions and asked why a request to visit other communities’ schools had been rejected; Lazzaro, who sat on the committee until the summer, said members did visit Arlington and other schools. A Circuit Road resident said she would not support the project without a dedicated maintenance fund for the new building. A third-generation resident who graduated in the second class of the current building said a $1,000 increase would push her one-income household into the low-income bracket, and that 12 houses are for sale within a five-minute walk of hers.
One speaker, a Main Street father, said he was the only person in the room with a child who would use the building, that centralizing programs in one structure has real benefits, and that modern schools draw the young families the city needs to grow its tax base. A resident on Zoom asked whether a firm city and state share would be known before the council’s own vote; Bears said yes, the February 2 figure and the state’s reimbursement decision both come before the March vote. The roll call on the release and the amendments was 6-0.
Cataldo: “no final agreement, there’s no imminent sale”
The resolution from Scarpelli, Councilor Anna Callahan and Bears asked the administration to analyze what a sale of Cataldo Ambulance would mean for the city’s contract. Scarpelli said he had reached out to the company as soon as he saw the report, and Dennis Cataldo, the owner, came to the meeting. Cataldo said the item that reached the public came from a filing with the state Health Policy Commission, which he described as a procedural application required of any health care entity with more than $25 million in revenue before it holds substantive talks about a transaction, a rule he traced to the collapse of Steward Health Care. “There was no final agreement, there’s no imminent sale,” he said. “It was really for an opinion to see which direction the state would take.” When information exists, he told the council, “you’ll hear it directly from me.”
Callahan said she joined the resolution because business owners had called her about ambulances posted in their parking lots, which customers read as a sign of trouble inside. Cataldo said the company has been in business 50 years, handles more than 75,000 emergency transports a year, and that in 36 years he had never received a call about an ambulance parked in a private lot; crews are placed where the call data says they are needed, and he would move one on request. Scarpelli said that had already happened once, in 15 minutes, after he called about a single business. A second Cataldo representative said the company does have a Medford base, at 281 Middlesex Avenue, and that its average response time in the city is five minutes or less. The council approved the resolution on a voice vote, with Scarpelli asking that the administration use its questions as a template for any vendor that changes hands.
The Law Department: tabled to the next meeting
The mayor’s letter asked for $269,295.81 to restore the Law Department budget the council cut in October, as reported in the story linked below, and warned that once the council sets the tax rate on November 17 the money can no longer be raised. Nazarian told the council that she and Finance Director Bob Dickinson could not find a way to set the money aside, that the mayor has contacted several firms about the independent review the council wants and intends to contact more, and that neither she nor the mayor can attend on November 17. Bears said municipal finance people he consulted suggested three routes: a transfer to stabilization, a supplemental appropriation to a general fund contingency account, or lowering another revenue estimate so the levy still captures the money. Nazarian said the administration does not want to touch stabilization ahead of a bond rating review for the high school, and that money in a contingency account would be legally available to spend once appropriated.
Scarpelli said he would not support “anything until we get the answers that we’ve requested,” and called the process “a dog and pony show.” Lazzaro said she could not discuss the Law Department budget any longer and that the request was not what councilors and the administration had agreed to at a meeting last week. She said she would rather spend the council’s time on the West Medford commuter rail station, where a man was killed by a train, and where she said the MBTA has had $5 million earmarked for safety improvements since 2023. Councilor Matt Leming asked whether the paper could be cut to one month; Bears said the one-month funding was already approved and that the question now is only the levy. Leming moved to table, Tseng seconded, and the motion carried on a voice vote. The paper returns at the next regular meeting, after the tax classification hearing.
Reserves: police chief search, recreation center, fire headquarters
The council took the $35,000 police chief search request off the table and approved it 6-0. Nazarian said the mayor and the chief are leading the recruitment, the city’s diversity director ran second-round interviews that day, and three to five candidates are expected to go before a panel on November 18. The money pays the consultant MGT for screening and background checks. Callahan repeated her request for a public committee of the whole with the consultant, saying the discussion she attended was about the vision for the next chief, not personnel details; Nazarian said the consultant had advised against a public meeting. Lazzaro, who sits on the panel, moved approval.
The council also approved 6-0 the November 4 request: $85,000 from the capital stabilization fund for a feasibility study and schematic drawings for the recreation center, $71,000 for the remaining window replacements and sealing at fire headquarters, and $24,476.44 from general stabilization to clean up after a heating valve failed and flooded the closed old police station side of the building. Recreation Director Kevin Bailey said the center is closed because of its gym floor, that at least 10 core winter programs have no home, and that the after-school program run with the YMCA has to keep operating through any construction. Facilities Director David MacIntyre said the building will be closed at least until spring. Scarpelli said the school gyms should be opened to recreation programs this winter, and that the window-and-valve repairs are a reminder that the city still needs a plan for a new fire headquarters.
Also Tuesday
The council granted National Grid a location to replace 1,665 feet of leak-prone six-inch gas main along Fulton Street and Brogan Road, 6-0, with the engineering division’s conditions. Two residents asked about paving and markings; the company’s representative said crews were retrained on compaction, that an inspector checks the trench at 90 days and one year, and that abutters get a notice with the supervisor’s phone number before work starts. The zoning amendment deleting the old vacant-property section 94-7.5 passed 6-0 with the Community Development Board’s recommendation that it take effect August 4, 2027, the same day the new vacant building ordinance in the general ordinances does.
Nazarian said the Veterans Services Office is staffed four days a week, that the outgoing director is serving as acting director and is in the office Wednesday evenings, and that interviews for the job begin next week. Leming asked for an update on the veterans shelter she had been developing with the American Legion. The Fire Department’s drone policy, filed under the city’s surveillance ordinance for an Autel EVO Max 4T XE the department already owns, went to the Public Health and Community Safety Committee on Lazzaro’s motion; a resident said during public participation that the ordinance requires the report before a purchase, not after.
Andrew Dall of Sturgis Street and a neighbor presented a petition about speeding and wrong-way driving on the one-way stretch between Fulton Street and Highland Avenue. The neighbor said the two of them have submitted more than 60 videos over six months and that a driver turned onto the street at about 40 miles an hour the day before. The council agreed to organize a Saturday site visit with the traffic engineer, the police traffic sergeant and neighbors, as it did for Fulton Spring Road, and Bears said a stop sign on Sturgis at Morgan Street and speed tables would be put to the Traffic Commission.
The council’s preview of this agenda is at this link. The October 27 meeting, where the Law Department cut was made, is here. The city’s recording is on YouTube.
