City Council

City of Salem, Massachuse3s “Know Your Rights Under the Open Mee@ng Law, M.G.L. c. 30A ss. 18-25 and City Ordinance Sec@ons 2-2028 through 2-2033.” The City Council Commi3ee on Commi3ee of the Whole met in the Council Chamber on Wednesday February 12, 2025 at 6:00 PM for the purpose of discussing the ma3ers(s) listed below. No@ce of this mee@ng was posted on February 10, 2025 at 11:04 A.M. (This mee@ng is being recorded) ATTENDANCE ABSENT WERE: Jerzylo and Varela SUBJECT(S) Re-Appointment of City Clerk Ilene Simons Discussion: During the September 2024 reappointment mee4ng, the council gave City Clerk, Ilene Simons 5 goals to work on and those goals are being reviewed tonight. 1. Technology adop4on and agenda management - Ilene met with Amy at Civic to set up the public and board portals and trained on how to create an agenda. She had department heads & councilors complete training. Ilene shared a print out of instruc4ons on how to access and navigate the agenda in the portal, how to take notes, and how to view your notes. She also shared extra copies of the status report for the goals. Discussion - Morsillo, StoI and Hapworth all thanked Ilene for her hard work at geKng the Agenda soLware up and running. They acknowledged that it was a lot of work and will be ongoing to con4nue to work on geKng used to the soLware as well as geKng the same soLware running for the sub-commiIees in the near future. 2. Public document accessibility - This is the shared drive that was discussed with goal number one. Ilene worked with Amanda Chiancola from Planning and Community Development because they are already using a shared drive. There were some issues geKng the public access set up so that you don’t have to login in to see it. Now it is accessible to the public and the councilors. Ilene sent the shared drive procedures to the councilors. Discussion - The shared drive is easy to manage, but it is only as good as the informa4on that is there so everyone needs to be sure to get the informa4on to Ilene and Maureen so they can add it to the shared drive. It is a work in progress and everyone needs to con4nue to work to get the informa4on in the shared drive so the public has beIer access to it and they can find out what’s going on. The backup informa4on will need to be sent to Ilene and Maureen. If there are ques4ons made during a mee4ng and there is follow up documenta4on, that needs to be sent to them so they can add it to the shared drive. Ilene is planning to review it in 3 months to see how it is working and if something needs to be changed or improved. 3. Customer service enhancement - Ilene spoke with the mayor and he suggested customer service training. Ilene had customer service training with her staff and asked if she could open up the training to other departments which the mayor approved so other departments had the training as well. Her staff enjoyed the training and want to do more so she got the list of available trainings and had her staff rank them. There were a few that stood out so she would like to con4nue with training on a quarterly basis. 4. Diversity, equity and inclusion - Ilene is working with Regina, DEI director on training for the councilors and staff. She is checking to see if any of the trainings are recorded or can be recorded in the future in case an employee can’t make it on the date that it is scheduled. Regina asked Ilene about translators and Ilene said that she had looked into it before and it was very expensive but Regina has some companies that she has worked with before that she is going to reach out to. Ilene has some bilingual poll workers and signs in Spanish at the polls. Since 2022, all of the ballots are bilingual. Discussion - It is good to have the DEI training and not just for new members, but long 4me councilors could do it again. The training should be ongoing. As far as translators for bilingual, it is ok if someone is having trouble with the language to stop them and have them wait for you to get someone that can beIer help them. Some poling loca4ons have more bilingual staff than others, so that is something to be mindful of going forward. 5. Collabora4on with the Mayor’s staff - Ilene spoke with the mayor about having monthly mee4ngs with Lisa Peterson, Chief of Staff. The mayor’s only concern was that they only meet if they have things to meet about. He doesn’t want them taking their 4me away from other things if they were mee4ng just to meet and don’t really have anything to discuss which Ilene agreed with. Ilene and Lisa met in November, January and February and the plan is to keep to lines of communica4on open. Discussion - it was agreed that they should not meet to just meet because there are plenty of other things to do but they want the mee4ngs to con4nue when necessary. The councilors would like Ilene to make sure that the Mayor’s staff knows about the shared drive and that they can access that any4me. Discussion - Alexandra Pineros-Shields, Chairperson for the Board of Registrars - She has lived in Salem for 20 years and experienced some discriminatory behavior at the vo4ng polls against La4nos during elec4ons. Many years ago, she joined the La4no leadership Coali4on and worked as a poll observer. During their research, the group no4ced that there were many 4mes that La4na voters were turned away from the polls and were denied their right to vote. The group reached out to the former City Clerk and requested a mee4ng to discuss their research but, for several years, were refused. Unfortunately, the culture of racial discrimina4on and lack of transparency was what Ilene inherited when she took over the posi4on as City Clerk. Since then, Ilene has made great progress in geKng away from that culture and con4nues to work on the democracy for everyone. She thinks that the work has just begun and needs to con4nue and she encourages the Council to create more goals for the City Clerk for the future and is very happy that the Council had created goals for this reappointment. She reminds us that DEI is not just about racial discrimina4on, but should also look at discrimina4on against the disabled, young adults, low income residents and immigrants. Ilene should keep working with the DEI Director and con4nue to advocate for DEI. Tom Furey, former City Councilor - Ilene is doing an excellent job as City Clerk and increasing the accessibility is important and technology is important for transparency, but she con4nues to keep a human touch on what she does. Alyssa Rosemar4n - 12 Buchanan Rd., Salem - Agrees that there has been great progress but more work needs to be done and she agrees with Alexandra that more goals should be set going forward. She would like to see less bias at the polls and more access to translators when engaging with the clerk’s office. Ilene Simons - There were people from the Department of Jus4ce that went to each poling loca4ons in 2022 and 2024 since Salem is dual language. They looked at the signs that were posted, they spoke with the translators, the