Local Government Update, December 2025
Listen to the latest conversation with Tyler Cote, the Community Engagement Specialist for the City of Watertown, and Victoria Weichel from WCA-TV to discuss things that have happened during the past month in Watertown through key moments, success stories, and important numbers.
Released December 16th, 2025
(Click here to listen on streaming apps) (Full transcript below)
Links mentioned in the episode:
Special City Council - Nov. 18th
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Transcript
Matt: 0:07
Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode I sit down for a conversation with someone in Watertown to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This episode is one of the monthly local government update episodes I do with Tyler Cote, the community engagement specialist for the city of Watertown, and Victoria Weichel over at WCA-TV. And this episode is for the month of December, 2025. So let's get into it. Welcome to the Local Government Update episode. I'm here as always with Tyler.
Tyler: 0:39
Hello.
Matt: 0:40
And Victoria.
Victoria: 0:41
Hello.
Matt: 0:42
All right, so let's dive right in. First segment, moments from the past month. I will start with you, Victoria.
Victoria: 0:48
So my moment of this month was during a special city council meeting on November 18th. The city council voted unanimously to approve changes to the winter parking ban. The winter parking ban will now start on January 1st and end March 1st. Violators will also now receive a $100 fine. A study for the winter parking ban is being conducted, and so more changes will come in the future, but that is much far down the line.
Tyler: 1:14
Yeah, my moment from the past month is actually more of the same. I will say that one clarification note on the fine situation. So the $100 fines are now if you do not move your car during a snow emergency. The fines for parking during the winter parking ban are still the same. So those have not changed. But for snow emergencies, those have increased up to $100 if you stay on the street. If we call a snow emergency, we really encourage you to move your car. Helps our emergency vehicles and our plows to get down the street, improve public safety, as well as ensure that if we need any of those emergency vehicles to get down your very tight, narrow roads here in Watertown, they're able to do so. So that's always important. But yeah, so winter parking ban, you can continue to park your cars curbside as you normally would during the summertime here throughout December. And enforcement will begin, it is technically actually at 1 a.m. on January 2nd. So it starts January 1st, but technically, you know, January 1st, what does that mean? Does that actually mean the evening of New Year's Eve? No. So the enforcement will begin 1 a.m. on January 2nd. The way that the winter parking ban policy is written is that you cannot leave your car in a public right-of-way for longer than one hour between the hours of 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. So we highly encourage and ask you to move your vehicle once the winter parking ban goes into effect here in January. Also, you can absolutely visit watertown-ma.gov slash winter, and there you'll find a list of hundreds of parking spaces that are available for our community to use during those hours in case you do not have an off-street parking option.
Tyler: 3:00
We know that this has been a conversation in the past. It is an abbreviated winter parking ban schedule this year as compared to maybe previous years, and it's going to continue to be a discussion moving forward as Victoria alluded to. But for this year, January 1st to March 1st. Now, I will say if a snowstorm comes on December 20th and it looks like it's going to be bad, we may put in a snow emergency before then, which means that you need to have your car moved from the public right away, i.e., roads, all hours of the snow emergency. That is not only overnight. It could be in the middle of the day if that's when the storm is happening. We'll get into a little bit about how you can ensure to stay up to date on those things. But always make sure you're staying up to date when you can.
Matt: 3:46
Gotcha. All right. Let's move on to a success story from the past month. What do you have, Victoria, for a success story?
Victoria: 3:54
I have on November 25th, this Watertown City Council met to discuss possibly purchasing the modular high school building to be able to use that for the middle school project. It was voted on unanimously to purchase the modular classrooms. The city will be purchasing them for $2.2 million. Purchasing them allows them flexibility regarding on how to tackle the middle school project. Purchasing them will also save them three million dollars and could potentially save the city more down the line as well. Once the modulars are no longer needed, there's potential to sell them. So it could also make a profit at the end of it.
Matt: 4:30
Nice. It gives us flexibility and options. You know, creative uses of the modulars afterwards perhaps.
Tyler: 4:36
Definitely. And to kind of add on to Victoria's point, thanks for starting us on this. I feel like we've talked about the middle school project for now like six months in various forms. You know, we talked about the design. I remember having conversations about some of the early designs as a part of the feasibility study or some of the concepts in the part of the feasibility study and the process of which the school building committee was taking, which was always super interesting to have those conversations. Then there was discussion about the financial concerns associated with it, because the feasibility study came in with higher costs than was budgeted for. And there were concerns about that. However, a lot of those discussions were based around the timeline that we were looking at because the modulars are on Moxley Field now. And with the high school getting ready to be completed, there was kind of a quick decision that was needing to be made around this. And with the decision to move forward by developing a plan of purchasing them, that just pushes the timeline out a little bit with more flexibility. And it also allows the city to change the process a little bit.
Victoria: 5:45
I'll just tack on. I know now they are considering going out to bid on the project. So that way they can know for sure what the cost would be.
Tyler: 5:53
Yes. There's two types of ways they can go about this project. So and Victoria, thanks for helping me through this a little bit. There is the construction manager at risk approach, which is essentially it puts a lot of the risk on the actual construction company that is taking this on. And then there's the design bid build approach, which is we design it, we put it out to bid, we find the bid that works best for us, lowest bid, whatever it might be, and then we go to build. And there might be a situation where the bids come in and they're far too high for us to be able to do it, and then we don't do it. But then that offers us the opportunity because of the flexibility with the modulars in purchasing them, and they're not automatically going to get taken away in June or whatever timeline it originally was planned out to be. That allows us far more flexibility in saying, like, okay, this fits into our budget now, so let's go forward and actually do that. So thank you, Victoria, for working me through that.
Victoria: 6:45
And I believe the previous school buildings were designed, bid, built.
Tyler: 6:50
Yes, yes. And President Sideris spoke pretty highly about the benefits of going in that approach as well. He had said five to eight percent additional savings was a number that he had mentioned in that council meeting. And he said, you know, it can fluctuate. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's always going to be five to eight percent, but the estimates kind of fall around that range. And I believe it might have been Counselor Palomba in the meeting as well, said having choices and having flexibility is always a good thing to have. You're not backed into making one decision and there's only a yes or a no. Having options in front of you is always a good thing. And it allows this opportunity to kind of explore the middle school project further on a timeline that might fit our budget and our community in a way that stresses might have been applied to those situations if they didn't go this route. So yeah, it's an interesting project.
Matt: 7:41
All right, Tyler, what's your success story?
Tyler: 7:43
Yeah. So several months ago, I believe it was back in our May episode, potentially, maybe June, May, June area. I had mentioned that the city was named a climate leader community by the state. It was a great success, and we're one of 15 to 20 communities to be named a climate leader community. There are 351 communities in the state. So being one of the first 20 or so is certainly a success. And these communities are named climate leader communities if they are an existing green community. I know I'm throwing around a lot of just capital proper nouns of these random things, but they are designations given by the state that say, hey, you are doing good things with regards to green energy, decarbonization, you know, zero emissions. And so to become a climate leader community, you need to be the existing green community. You have to have an existing advising committee related to local energy activities, which we have the Watertown Environmental and Energy Efficiency Committee, better known as WE3C, a commitment and roadmap for municipal decarbonization, a zero emissions vehicle policy, and a specialized stretch energy code. You don't need to know, you don't need to memorize all those, but it basically means we need to check off several boxes to be considered like the upper echelon climate leader within the state. We were one of the first to do that. Watertown's always been a leader when it comes to climate energy, and this is just another example of that. And the state was recognizing that.
Tyler: 9:12
Well, this month it was announced that the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources is awarding us $918,000 to add a rooftop and canopy solar and building management system to the Department of Public Works. The reason this is a big deal is because it addresses that municipal decarbonization plan that I'd mentioned before that actually gave us the opportunity to even go for this grant. But it's expecting to reduce the building's greenhouse gas emissions by 90 tons, which is heavier than I can lift. And it also provides almost all the electricity needed for that facility. So we're talking about savings north of $70,000. So it's a great success. It's something that the city continues to be proud of taking these steps in these ways that are not only ecologically efficient and have an impact on climate, but also this is a grant. This is money that is not necessarily coming out of our operating funds. You're not going to see it in the budget in the same way that you would see something else. This is coming as a grant. And the reason that we were available to even receive this grant is because we took those steps and we’re a climate leader community. So we were only one of the numbers now up to 29. They just added some more climate leader communities to the list. But we are one of only now 29 communities that could even apply for this grant. So taking these steps of being a leader, it is paying off in the end, both literally with this access to grant funding and getting these awards, but also it's allowing us to further address some of the climate goals that we have as a community. So that work will happen over the next several months and potentially a year or two. I don't have the exact timeline, but something that as a community, I think that, you know, not something you have to go around and be like, Do you hear our DPW building has canopy and rooftop solar? But it's something that I think we can.
Matt: 10:58
I mean, I could.
Tyler: 11:00
You could. But the but the thing is, you could.
Matt: 11:02
Yes. So you don't know how I go around.
Tyler: 11:06
That's true. That's right. So I just think it's another example of the city and the community continuing to put climate and energy first and at the forefront of a lot of things that we're doing and wanting to be a leader in it and something that we should be proud of that we are actually succeeding at doing it.
Matt: 11:20
Nice.
Tyler: 11:21
Yeah.
Victoria: 11:22
Can't wait to see those canopies while filming sports at Victory Field.
Tyler: 11:26
Yeah.That's right. That's right. You can do some B-rolls over there and check it out in between plays.
Victoria: 11:31
That part of town does get a lot of sun.
Tyler: 11:33
Yeah, it does, so.
Matt: 11:34
Need any public art on those canopies?
Tyler: 11:37
Hmm. Now we're talking.
Victoria: 11:38
Yeah.
Matt: 11:39
Maybe we need a new mascot, not just Walker Pond.
Tyler: 11:41
Yeah, I was going to say. Every area of our city.
Matt: 11:43
Every park of Watertown needs a mascot.
Victoria: 11:47
I would say I think for that area, it should be some sort of dog. Typically, when we're filming sports, we can hear the dogs at Whitney Hill Park being walked and barking.
Tyler: 11:56
Oh, yeah. I will say, as part of the Walker Pond, this goes back to previous episodes when we talked about Walker Pond and the potential for what was a frog mascot?
Matt:12:05
Bullfrog mascot.
Tyler: 12:06
Yeah. We did a little engagement session with some of the students at the Jewish Community Day School last week, so early December. We wanted to get their opinions on some of the ideas and the concepts and have them engage in a couple of different activities. We had some students coming up to us and being like, hey, where do the bats live? Can we build houses for the bats at Walker Pond? So there’s.
Victoria: 12:28.
That's so cute.
Tyler: 12:29
Yeah. There's a lot of interest over in Walker Pond for infrastructure for some of these. You know, we might need to have a multiple mascot situation over in Walker Pond where we have bats and bullfrogs living in unison. So I just wanted to.
Matt: 12:44
I’ll update my proposal.
Tyler: 12:45
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So sorry for the digression, but I wanted to follow up on the continued interest in the wildlife over a Walker Pond and potential mascot situation.
Matt: 12:57
Definitely important. Can't miss that. Awesome. All right, let's move on to our next section. Did you know? All right, Tyler, what do I need to know or what didn't I know?
Tyler: 13:08
Yeah. So this is something that we as a community have had, but it's something that you're gonna see more forwardly facing on some of the things that we make public to the community. And I know I've talked about this a little bit in the past, but what you're gonna start seeing in some of the agendas coming up that we post online, so city council meetings, boards, commissions, committees, and all other elected and appointed boards, you're gonna start seeing reasonable accommodation language on there. This is an important step. Previous listeners may remember that we had announced we had completed a ADA self-evaluation and transition plan, which is essentially evaluating how accessible some of our programs and services are in the city, which is an important step for communities to take. And one of the recommendations is hey, on your public meetings, you need to really make sure that you're making it clear how people can request reasonable accommodation, what the steps are, what the timeline is. So, what our community is going to start seeing is our statements on our agendas of how you can reach out to our ADA coordinator, Jay Terminiello. The process that we're taking, the sooner that requests get submitted, the better. So, say you might need ASL interpretation for a meeting for you to directly participate, then you can make the submission. The earlier that we get those requests, the better. But in any case, reasonable effort is going to be made to find accommodations so that people can participate in these meetings.
Tyler: 14:30
I will note all of our public meetings, a majority of them are held at City Hall, which is an accessible building, which is an important thing to note. But it's important that all of our meetings, whether it's at City Hall or not, are held in accessible locations. But regardless, if you have a request or if you have a question regarding it, you can reach out to ADA at watertown-ma.gov with an email. And as you open up agendas starting here in the next handful of weeks over the course of December and January, as those meetings start to get posted, you can see the process and the information needed in order to actually submit those requests. So wanted to just give everybody that heads up. It's a good step, but we want to make sure that we're being as accessible as we can be. And we don't want to create any sort of barrier for individuals to participate in our public meetings in any way that they can.
Matt: 15:16
Sounds great. All right. We're going to move on to the next one for you, Tyler. Questions you're getting a lot.
Tyler: 15:22
Yeah.
Matt: 15:22
Tyler, what is a question you are getting a lot?
Tyler: 15:24
Right now, and I think it ties into the first thing that Victoria and I talked a little bit about, which is snow and emergencies and how people are getting updated. I've talked about it ad nauseum in this, and I know that it even led to a jingle in previous episodes as well.
Matt: 15:40
Might have to bring it back.
Tyler: 15:41
Yeah, we might have to bring it back. It's questions of is my Everbridge up to date? I was talking with Laura, our director of 311, and this is something that they're getting calls a lot about. And I think it has to do with the increased fines that are going to be handed down during snow emergencies if you don't move your car. I recommend everybody to visit watertown-ma.gov slash everbridge to sign up. The reason why I'm pushing people to our website to sign up as opposed to doing the texting link, which is a good thing, which is I know what our jingle is associated with, is because when you sign up online, you can geolocate yourself. So you can basically say, this is where I live. And then the reason why that's beneficial for us in the city side is our team is sending probably three Everbridge calls a week. I know that sounds like a lot. A majority of these are located to specific streets or to just a few homes because there are water main breaks in the city. There's construction work that's going on in the city. And when it comes to snow emergencies, then those go out to everybody. But we're sending about two or three a week pretty consistently at this point. And it's the quickest way for you to get information that is going to impact you directly. So I recommend going to watertown-mma.gov slash everbridge. I'll make sure that that gets added to the show notes as well. But you can add a number associated with your address. You can add an email and a text as well. So you can get them that way and not just phone calls. Majority of the phone calls are going to come directly from our 311 department, Laura, or you may hear my voice on there as well if you're not tired of it from listening to this podcast.
Tyler: 17:16
And it really helps us at City Hall, partially because, like I mentioned, we can geolocate, but it also helps us when it comes to these snow emergencies, because if you only sign up over the texting, then the messages might not be able to be as detailed as they are able to be just over a phone call where we can give all the information regarding when a snow emergency starts, how long we anticipate the snow emergency to go, when the snow emergency ends. Like you might only get quick snippets of info over text, whereas the signing up with a full account online is really, really beneficial. And you get all the information that you need. One thing I can promise is that unless there is a significant, significant like public emergency, we aren't going to call you at midnight. If there's snow coming, you're going to know about a snow emergency well before it gets to the middle of the evening. If there's a water main break, you're most likely not going to receive a call at 1 a.m. Won't speak for everybody, but not a lot of people are using their water at 1 a.m. If that water main break is still impacting an area come 8 a.m. in the morning, then that's when we'll probably make sure that the information gets out over Everbridge.
Tyler: 18:26
But this is information that is being run by people. So we make decisions to make sure that the information is getting out timely and also not completely impacting people's evenings when you're in the middle of sleeping, anything like that. And we also aren't going to necessarily add like any information that you sign up for in Everbridge, we're not taking that and throwing it into a bunch of other newsletters. If you sign up for this, you're signing up for this. This is a public safety tool that we take very seriously. We don't use it for letting you know to take a survey about something or anything like that. This is entirely used as like a, hey, there's a snow emergency. Hey, your water's getting shut off. Hey, there's construction happening on your street, and you might not be able to get out of your driveway. So please make sure you have your car moved before it starts so that you can actually access going to your office or going to a doctor's appointment or wherever it might be. So highly recommend going online, signing up for that if you can. And then all winter long, visit watertown-ma.gov slash snow. That's where you're going to see the latest updates with regards to storms. And even if there isn't a snow emergency, then that's where you'll end up seeing some of those softer updates of saying, like, we recognize that it's snowing right now, but we're not going to be calling a snow emergency, just so that everybody can stay up to date there as well.
Matt: 19:37
So yeah. Gotcha. All right. Let's move on. Number of the month. Huh. Big old goose egg here from Tyler. Zero. Well, we know it's not your bowling score.
Tyler: 19:47
No, definitely not.
Matt:
From our last time of Tyler's humble brag, state champ.
Tyler: 19:54
Three three time.
Matt: 19:55
Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. So uh hmm, zero. I'm trying to think of. So it's gotta be, I'm assuming it's a good connotation for having zero. Is this related to something with green communities or something too, somehow?
Tyler: 20:07
No.
Matt: 20:08
Zero emissions, no. So I don't know. Any ideas, Victoria?
Victoria: 20:11
Trying to think. Most of the time you don't like seeing the number zero.
Matt: 20:14
Unless it's zero, zero increases on something.
Tyler: 20:18
Oh, well, I think that this zero will be positively received by our community. That is zero dollars, which is the amount of money that you have to pay to go and free skate at the Watertown rink this winter. So located at 1Paramount Place in Watertown, our skating rink is offering free skate for our community to come by on Sundays from 2 to 3.30. And then Tuesdays and Thursdays, you can go around midday from 11 to 12:50, right up to one. There's some other things going on at one on those days. Us coming into the holiday season, people are going to be home a little bit more frequently looking for things to do. This is a good opportunity to maybe bring the family out, go out with some friends, go skate at the John A. Ryan skating rink over at 1 Paramount Place. That is on the west end of Watertown. So not too far away from Walker Pond. And you can go over there. Zero dollars. I will say we do not have skate rentals, unfortunately. So bring your own skates or check if a neighbor has skates, a friend has skates. I will say I did check with the library. They unfortunately do not have skates in their library of things. They do have snowshoes though. So if you have your own skates and you want to go over to the rink to skate on one of our free skate days, stop by the library, grab some snowshoes, and walk on over. You could. So yeah, that is zero dollars number of the month, which is a good number. If you're looking for something to do, it's a good opportunity to get out and enjoy some time at the skating rink this winter season.
Matt: 21:50
Yeah. Yeah, maybe buy nothing or some other group online might have people giving away some skates. All right. So I guess we're just gonna round this one out here with our upcoming. So, Victoria, you want to start us off? What's upcoming?
Victoria: 22:03
I will just say keep an eye on meetings. We're filming this on December 8th. And on December 11th, there will be a special school building committee meeting discussing the middle school. So next month we will have more updates regarding the middle school then. Otherwise, it's December, so meetings are a little quieter.
Matt: 22:18
Yeah, makes sense. How about you, Tyler?
Tyler: 22:21
I'll just give a shout to inauguration is taking place on January 2nd, which is a Friday. I believe WCATV will be covering.
Victoria: 22:33
Usually we do.
Tyler: 22:34
And you can get more information about that at wartown-ma.gov. I also want to just give a shout to keep an eye out sometime, likely in January, we will be releasing the applications for a year two of Civics Academy.
Matt: 22:48
Do you need a jingle for Civics Academy?
Tyler: 22:50
I might need it. The Civics Academy, I'll definitely share more in future episodes, and you can go back and listen to probably our June or July episode when I did kind of a reflective success story on it back then. But keep an eye out for that. That application will go live and we'll make sure that we push that out through all of our typical channels. City Hall will have some updated hours just as we get into the holiday season with some days where we're closed. So it is a half day on December 24th. City Hall will be closing at 12:30. Public Works will be closing at 11 a.m. They're usually a little earlier than us because they start earlier. Closed on Christmas Day on December 25th, and then City Hall is closed on December 26th, that Friday. And then it is almost the exact same schedule the following week on December 31st, New Year's Eve, which is a half day, New Year's Day, we are closed, and January 2nd, we are closed as well.
Matt: 23:49
So except for inauguration stuff.
Tyler: 23:51
Yeah, that's right. We're laying out the red carpet, just clearing out for all inauguration things on the second, which will take place at 6 p.m. And one last plug for our Everbridge emergency alert system, watertown-ma.gov slash Everbridge. It's really important to make sure you stay up to date. That's where you're going to find out about all the emergency alerts, including snow emergencies, as we move into the winter. And one last reminder about the winter parking ban starting enforcement the early, early morning of January 2nd, the evening of January 1st, starting at 1 a.m. that morning. So keep an eye on that. And thank you, Matt, as always, for another good episode.
Matt: 24:28
All right. Well, I guess we got an episode there. Thank you, Tyler.
Tyler: 24:31
Thank you, Matt and Victoria.
Matt: 24:33
Thank you, Victoria.
Victoria: 24:34
Thank you.
Matt: 24:35
So that's it for my conversation with Tyler and Victoria. I'll include their links in the show notes for things that were mentioned. And if you'd like to hear more of these episodes and the regular interviews that I do, you can head on over to Little Local Conversations.com. Where I have all the episodes, information on events coming up, which actually I'm taking a break until February, so there’s nothing on there right now, but you can check back later. Or you can subscribe to my email newsletter that I send out once a week so that you can keep up to date. And you can find that on the homepage or in the menu on the website as well. If you'd like to help support the podcast and keep these conversations going, you can click on the support local conversation button in the menu, and you can become a little local friend and help keep these conversations going. Again, head on over to Little Local Conversations.com for all of that.
Matt: 25:18
Alright, and I want to give a few shout outs here to wrap things up. First one goes to podcast sponsor, Arsenal Financial, which is a financial planning business here in Watertown. It's owned by Doug Orifice, he's a very committed community member, and his business helps busy families, small businesses, and people close to retirement. So if you need help in any of those areas, reach out to Doug and his team at arsenalfinancial.com. I also want to give a thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council, who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast. So I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. You can find out more about them at Watertown Cultural Council.org and Mass Cultural Council.org. And a couple more shout outs to promotional partners. First one goes to the Watertown Business Coalition, they're a nonprofit organization here in Watertown, and their motto is Community is Our Business. Find out more about them at Watertown Business Coalition.com. And lastly, Watertown News, which is a Watertown Focus Online newspaper run by Charlie Breitrose here in the city. It's a great resource and a great place to keep up to date with everything going on. Go check that out at WatertownMANews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.
