City Council approves budget, mostly, and takes aim at public records request

By Crystal Yormick

Medford City Council approved the budget for fiscal year 2027 after slashing the city’s legal department by 83% with a 6 to 1 vote — Councilor George Scarpelli being the only councilor to vote no — at its meeting Tuesday. It also approved a resolution to appeal the mayoral administration’s response to a public records request to the Secretary of State’s Office. 

The council has been going back and forth with Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn and her administration for months after councilors filed a public records request aimed at learning the full extent of the city’s legal costs. The councilor's submission requested all public records containing legal references including lawsuits, claims, administrative proceedings, arbitration and any other legal documents the mayor is involved in. Councilor George Scarpelli read the entire request out at the meeting.  

“We’re really talking about a spreadsheet, a table, a chart, that talks about an aggregate cost to the city’s legal matters over the last six years,” City Council President Zac Bears said. “Some sort of data-driven approach, so that we can know how much that was spent on what things.”

Since that request, councilors have said the city has continually withheld the information they asked for. Medford Chief of Staff Nina Nazarian said the specificity of the request has been a barrier to providing the information and described the request filed by councilors as complex and cumbersome. 

Several councilors protested against that. They said the city has talked about how much work it would be while spending time digging up emails and information about legal costs in neighboring cities. The administration could have been using that time and those resources to complete the request instead, they said. 

“We’ve articulated the questions, re-articulated questions several different ways and approaches, but the answers are not forthcoming,” Bears said. 

The city has provided some records, like a breakdown of the legal costs of the fire department with KP Law, but councilors said this response is unsatisfactory. Scarpelli, who spoke out the most in demanding the records, said the response from the mayor’s office is shady and disingenuous. 

Councilor Justin Tseng said it would be irresponsible to suggest “anything untoward” about the mayoral office’s motivation for holding the records, but they have a responsibility to residents to get them the answers.

“If there’s nothing to hide, that’ll be great,” Tseng said. “But the only way to know that is to get the answers. And so many residents are asking.”

Prior to the amended budget with the legal cuts, proposed by Tseng, more than half of the councilors rejected a 1/12 budget, which would have allowed the city to operate on monthly margins, rather than the full yearly budget.

The council also passed resolutions to establish a special education reserve fund for Medford Public Schools, approved a Community Preservation Committee Appropriation Request for Royall House and Shiloh Baptist Church, and approved a funding request for a capital needs assessment of the Curtis-Tufts School.

It tabled a motion to recommend a MassDOT project that would alter the layout of Main Street and impose temporary and permanent easements on residents. This will give affected residents and business owners more time to communicate their thoughts and concerns about the project with the city. 

The meeting began by honoring Marie Cassidy, director and family specialist of the Medford Family Network, who will retire at the end of June.

The council’s next meeting will be Tuesday, July 14 at 7 p.m.