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THE MALDEN ADVOCATE–Friday, December 8, 2023 Page 13 Mystic Valley Mashup: An Intergenerational Event M ystic Valley Elder Services (MVES) and Mystic Valley Regional Charter School (MVRCS) teamed up for some intergenerational fun this Halloween. Students visited older adults and people with disabilities who live at 630 Salem St. in Malden to share some fall activities. Grade 3 students were accompanied by National Honor Society students from MVRCS’s high school. The residents enjoyed activities, such as getting their faces painted, toilet papering the kids at “mummy stations” and indoor bowling. Then the third-graders went around to tables manned by the residents and trick-or-treated at each one. Terri Fitzgerald, MVES Resident Service Coordinator at 630 Salem St., said the building has collaborated with MVRCS for 10 years and everyone always has a wonderful time at their shared events. MVES offered special MVRCS students brought fun activities and lots of enthusiasm to 630 Salem St. in Malden. (Photo courtesy of MVES) After providing activities for the older adults, the MVRCS high school students supervised while the third-graders did some trick-or-treating at 630 Salem St. (Photo courtesy of MVES) thanks to the Malden Housing Authority for supporting this event and the ongoing partnership with the school, and to the National Honor Society for helping to coordinate the students’ visit. MVES is a nonprofit agency that has provided services and resources to older adults, people with disabilities and their caregivers for almost 50 years. For more info about MVES or to partner with the organization, please visit www.mves.org or call 781-324-7705. For more info about MVRCS, visit www. mvrcs.com. Beacon Hill Roll Call By Bob Katzen THE HOUSE AND SENATE: There were no roll call votes in the House or Senate last week. This week, Beacon Hill Roll Call reports local representatives’ roll call attendance records for the 2023 session through December 1. The House has held 70 roll calls so far in 2023. Beacon Hill Roll Call tabulates the number of roll calls on which each representative was present and voting, and then calculates that number as a percentage of the total roll call votes held. That percentage is the number referred to as the roll call attendance record. In the House, 70.6 percent (113 representatives out of 160) did not miss any roll calls and have 100 percent roll call attendance records, while 29.4 percent (47 representatives out of 160) have missed one or more roll calls. There were 13 representatives who missed eight or more roll calls resulting in roll call attendance records below 90 percent. The four representatives who missed the most roll calls are Reps. Michelle Ciccolo (D-Lexington), Richard Haggerty (D-Woburn), Daniel Hunt (D-Dorchester) and Joan Meschino (D-Hull) who each missed 25 roll calls for a 64.2 percent roll call attendance record. Rounding out the list of 13 representatives who missed eight or more roll calls are the following: Reps. Tram Nguyen (D-Andover) who missed 23 roll calls (67.1 percent roll call attendance record); Mary Keefe (D-Worcester) who missed 13 roll calls (81.4 percent roll call attendance record); Kenneth Gordon (D-Bedford) and Chynah Tyler (D-Roxbury) who each missed 12 roll calls (82.8 percent roll call attendance record); Tricia Farley-Bouvier (D-Pittsfield), Adam Scanlon (D-North Attleborough), Kim Ferguson (R-Holden), and Fred Barrows (R-Mansfield) who each missed nine roll calls (87.1 percent roll call attendance record); and Margaret Scarsdale (D-Pepperell) who missed eight roll calls (88.5 percent roll call attendance record. Beacon Hill Roll Call contacted the 13 representatives to ask why they missed some roll calls. Only five of the 13 responded. The other eight were contacted three times but did not respond. The list of nonrespondents consists of Reps. Nguyen, Keefe, Gordon, Tyler, Farley-Bouvier, Scanlon, Ferguson and Barrows. Here are the responses: Rep. Hunt responded: “Up until this date I have not missed a roll call. Last minute, I had to go get my child from daycare because they had a fever. I’ve previously voted in favor of the budget line items and the tax proposal.” Rep. Scarsdale responded: “On September 27 I had to leave the chamber subsequent to roll call #49 due to a preplanned meeting with first responders in my district. This is the only day I have left the chamber during roll call votes during my tenure. I therefore missed roll calls #50 through #57. [Acting] Speaker Alice Peisch made a statement on the floor reflecting the reason I had to leave, and the fact that had I been present I would have voted in the affirmative for all eight of those roll calls, and this statement is recorded in the House Journal for the day. All eight of those votes resulted in an affirmative outcome either unanimously or by a substantial margin.” Rep. Haggerty responded: "I missed a single day of voting this session on September 27, 2023, when I was unfortunately not able to attend a session due to a family commitment. The first roll call vote was for the tax relief legislation which I had previously voted in favor of, and I would have voted in favor of again. The remaining procedural votes were overrides of the governor’s budget vetoes which were budget items I had previously voted in favor of. I would have voted in favor of each of those as well." Rep. Ciccolo responded: “This session, I was away from the House chamber during [a] formal session on a single day: September 27th, to attend a work-related conference at which I was learning about single use plastic reduction strategies through reuse and refill.This was the day the budget overrides were being taken up and H 4104 was being enacted.There were an unusually high number of roll call votes on that single day.Fortunately, the vast majority of the items voted on were items on which I had previously voted during the budget and during H 4104's original engrossment, so my record in the affirmative on these matters should be clear.” Rep. Meschino responded: "I was Indoor bowling was one of several games provided for older adults at a fall party cohosted by Mystic Valley Elder Services and Mystic Valley Regional Charter School. (Photo courtesy of MVES) traveling internationally in September when the House scheduled a formal session. I made the commitment well over 15 months earlier. I had no way to know [what] the session schedule would be.The House voted [for] two conference committee reports and a series of budget veto overrides. I only missed the one day of formal session, but the House took up quite a few votes that day.” REPRESENTATIVES’2023 ROLL CALL ATTENDANCE RECORDS THROUGH DECEMBER 1, 2023 The percentage listed next to the representatives’ name is the percentage of roll call votes on which the representative voted. The number in parentheses represents the number of roll calls that he or she missed. Rep. Paul Donato 100 percent (0) Rep. Steven Ultrino 100 percent (0) ALSO, UP ON BEACON HILL BAN HOSTILE ARCHITECTURE THAT TARGETS THE HOMELESS (H 3963) –The State Administration and Regulatory Oversight Committee held a hearing on a proposal that would prohibit the state, the MBTA and cities and towns from constructing “hostile architecture” that supporters of the ban say targets the homeless and tries to push them out of certain areas. The bill defines hostile architecture as “any building or structure that is designed or intended to prevent unhoused individuals from sitting or lying on the building or structure at street level.” According to Robert Rosenberger, an associate professor of philosophy at Georgia Institute of Technology, who has studied and written extensively on the subject, hostile architecture includes armrests that divide benches so that the bench is not long enough to sleep on, sprinklers that are turned on at night and certain trash cans. “Garbage cans … serve several functions for people living unhoused,” said Rosenberger. “Some people use garbage cans as a source of recyclable materials [which] can often be exchanged for a small sum of money. Garbage cans are also sometimes approached as a source of discarded food.” He notes that many newer garbage cans are built so that people cannot reach inside them to obtain recycled bottles or cans or leftover food. Supporters say that family homelessness in Greater Boston has doubled over the last decade, shelters are overcrowded and waiting lists for affordable housing are in the tens of thousands. They note that policies that sterilize the homelessness crisis in public spaces are not only inhumane, but they also only serve to mask the problem. “Housing ought to be a human right and combating homelessness will require a comprehensive approach that includes housing production, tenant protections and bigger investments in affordability and services,” said sponsor Rep. Mike Connolly (D-Cambridge). “What will not work is designing public spaces that are hostile to unhoused people. This only sends the issue deeper into the shadows.” BAN SOME ARTIFICIAL TURFS (H 3948) – Another measure heard by the State Administration and Regulatory Oversight Committee would ban municipalities and the state from installing or subsidizing new artificial turf fields that contain zinc, plastic, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or other toxins. It would not affect current turf fields which would be grandfathered in under the bill, but it would assure that no new public artificial turf construction would take place. BHRC| SEE PAGE 15

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