Okay.

Well, good morning everyone.

Welcome to the December 6th special meeting of City Council.

Time is now to attend.

Councilmember Magnus.

Here.

Councilmember Johnson.

Council Member Ruther.

Here.

Mayor Bronston.

Here.

Um.

So our session uh item today is our annual performance review.

Excuse me, there's a term.

Um that includes um evaluation, reappointment extension, separation conference, so um we will now open public comment.

And what I'll do is I will similar to public forum, I'll call each person's name and also call the name of the person following each person so they could be ready to go.

So, our first person, yeah.

Our first person is poor good board.

Who's who's gonna be after him?

Our next person will be uh Mariah.

Mariah.

Mariah, sorry.

Paul.

Yes, they are.

I mean it's totally your discretion.

I don't think it would take three minutes for cleaning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

You want me to send you to hearing?

Good morning.

Floor is yours.

My name's Mariah Gregoria, and I'm here to thank Matthew Chester for the service he has provided to this community, the service and leadership, and to remind us council what a gym you have in a public servant.

Um many of you probably know me as the person who comes and fights for bridge time with the pickleball players and um doing other things, but I've worked with the city on a number of projects, including protests against raises in the prices of renting this room, and also we had a five-year dispute with our next door neighbor, and the city helped us with these uh violations where Ocean Colony wouldn't touch it.

So we have worked closely with the city on many things.

Um I also want to just mention that I'm not just an ordinary person in a sense.

I do have a lot of experience in administration at high levels in public service.

I was director of planning and program development for all of Commonwealth of Massachusetts employment and training money, and there were many, many, many millions of dollars in those days.

I also managed the training program for the Boston Harbor Project, where we fulfilled a promise to the workers and our decrepit primary plant so that they could operate the new uh tertiary plant that was being built.

So I see Matthew as a very skilled public person because I've worked with many high-level public people who are you I don't know that you appreciate how the skills.

Two things I will also just mention.

Uh one at one point I became very unhappy with a public one one of the city employees, and I went to complain to Matthew, and I was a little surprised by how vociferously he defended the public employee, but I must say that the behavior I didn't like was corrected.

And I also want to point out another instance where Matthew accompanied Debbie to a meeting at Ocean Colony to meet with the public and to bring news that wasn't all joyful, you know.

And the people there, it was a good crowd, directed most of their questions to Matthew.

And he was um relaxed, eloquent, um, informative, plain spoken, and it was a productive meeting, and I think people walked away.

Not everybody was happy with the answers, but the answers are the answers.

You know, I think we need to also think about the fact that COVID hit this community harder than most, since we are so dependent upon the TOT, and the writs suffered enormously.

Hotels have not regained their position.

They have not regained their earning power, and the TOT remains low.

So that I think you know, you're facing a particularly challenging time right now, because I think it's even harder to manage.

I apologize, there's no audio book at time.

Okay.

So what I want to say is uh Matthew is a community resource, and we love him, and you need to protect him because we will be great.

Okay, thank you.

So our next speaker is Paul Gregoriev, followed by Harvey Vermont.

Okay.

Good morning, Paul.

Uh I just want to uh say a few words on our city manager's behalf.

Uh over the past 13 years, I've watched several city managers come and go.

This one has stayed and performed, in my opinion, excellently as our city manager.

He had the unfortunate luck to be hit by COVID, which basically took the financial underpinnings out from under our city, and he still performed in that scenario as senior staff were devastated.