The Chelsea City Council confirmed 17 appointments and reappointments to city boards and commissions on Monday night, on a roll call of eight in favor, none opposed, three absent. Eleven of the 17 are seats on the Youth Commission.
The list came from City Manager Fidel Maltez under Section 4-2 of the city charter, arrived on September 14, and was held for a second reading. The names below are as they appear in the city manager’s letter in the council packet, which is the authority; the recording of the meeting garbles several of them. Home addresses appear in the packet and are not reproduced here.
The list
Board of Library Trustees, reappointment. Monica Elias-Orellana, three-year term expiring September 24, 2029.
Historical Commission, appointment. Giancarlo Saldana and Charlotte Dumont, three-year terms expiring September 30, 2029.
Planning Board, appointment. Sara Nasah, three-year term expiring September 30, 2029.
Conservation Commission, appointment. Joseph LaFond, three-year term expiring September 30, 2029.
Youth Commission, appointment. Yuliana Padilla, Brianna G. Flores Pineda, Sadiel Hernandez, Lily Castro Reyes and Jeymi Menendez, one-year terms expiring September 30, 2027.
Youth Commission, reappointment. Yurie Lee, Nina Young Lee, Catherine Hernandez, Hazel Hatleberg, Kendra Morales and Madyson Chea, one-year terms expiring September 30, 2027.
Chelsea Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, reappointment. Raymond Morales, five-year term expiring September 26, 2031.
The Planning Board seat is the one to watch
Of the seven bodies on the list, the Planning Board has the most direct power over what gets built in Chelsea. It reviews site plans, makes recommendations to the Zoning Board of Appeals on special permits, and votes on the master plan the city has been working through this fall. Its recommendation against the proposed Walmart depot on Webster Avenue is the reason that project is still in front of the ZBA.
The Conservation Commission matters for the same reason on the water side, with jurisdiction over wetlands and the shoreline at a moment when the city is arguing with the state about the Mary O’Malley State Park pier and watching a 17-acre waterfront parcel change hands.
Nobody was sure what to do with the people who showed up
The awkward part of the night came before the vote. Council President Roberto Jimenez-Rivera asked the appointees in the audience to stand so the council could see who was there, and thanked them.
District 8 Councillor Calvin Brown spoke about what the seats cost the people who take them. “Thank you for your willingness to serve on these non-paying positions,” he said. “Sometimes it gets a little tedious, you have to give up family matters and come out to go to a meeting, and also you have to sometimes take flack from the petitioners and the opponents.”
District 6 Councillor Giovanni Recupero then asked for something more. “I would like to ask each person that’s being nominated, when they come up, to stand up so we can at least know who you are,” he said. “We know your name but we don’t know your faces. If I’m going to vote, I want to see what you look like.”
Jimenez-Rivera pointed out that the council had already done the standing part and that no rule provides for anything further, then went ahead with it anyway. The appointees each stood, said their name, and named the board they were joining. It took about 20 seconds.
Afterward the president said out loud what the exercise had exposed. “We need to figure out a better process for this, because we are now requiring, we’re asking folks to come here, and yet we don’t really have a good way of navigating this,” he said. “I always hate it when folks just kind of come and then just sit there and then you just leave and it’s very uneventful. So either we need to turn it into a thing or we shouldn’t have you here for just sitting there.” He invited members to bring him a rule.
The underlying question
Chelsea’s boards run on volunteers, and Brown is right that they are hard to fill. The council’s own practice sits between two options it has not chosen between: confirm on paper, as most of these confirmations effectively are, or actually interview people who are about to get a vote on development, historic buildings and public housing. On Monday it did neither, and then said so.
Résumés for the new appointees are in the September 14 council packet. Anyone who wants a copy can write to [email protected].