[Zac Bears]: Medford City Council, Committee of the Whole, meeting notice, Wednesday, October 5th, 2022 at 6 p.m. on paper 22-496. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Caraviello-Lewis, it's going to be late. Councilor Collins.
[Unidentified]: Present. Councilor Knight. Councilor Scarpelli, I see. Present. Present.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Vice President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Present. Five present, two absent. The meeting is called to order. There'll be a meeting of the Medford City Council Committee of the Whole on Wednesday, October 5th, 2022 at 6 p.m. in the Medford City Council Chamber on the second floor of Medford City Hall. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the draft Medford Comprehensive Plan, paper 22-496. The council has invited Director of Planning, Development and Sustainability, Alicia Hunt, staff members from the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability, and members of the Comprehensive Plan Consultants Team. For further information, aids and accommodations, contact the City Clerk at 781-393-2425. Sincerely yours, Nicole Morell, Council President. Thank you for being here today. As I just said, we're here to talk about the draft Medford Comprehensive Plan. We have a number of folks both in the room and on Zoom who have worked diligently on the plan and are going to present kind of an overview to us. Then we will turn it over to the Councilors for questions, perhaps members of the public. And then after that, we'd love to hear what the next steps are since this is a draft and it will be going into a finalization state. With that, unless there are immediate questions from the council, I will turn it over to Director Hunt.
[Alicia Hunt]: Good evening, Councilors. Thank you for having us this evening. The Medford Comprehensive Plan has been a work in progress for almost the past 18 months. With me this evening are some of the consultants who have been working on this plan. We've actually had quite a large team. With me this evening is Bree Hensholdt and Annie Streetman from Agency Landscape and Planning, and they will be presenting the plan to you this evening. They have a presentation prepared after their presentation. We're all available for questions. I also have Amanda Centrella from my office with us as well. and there's at least one consultant on the Zoom as well available for their area of questions. So with that, I think I'm just gonna hand it over to Bree and Annie to present to you all.
[Zac Bears]: Just when you speak, if you could just give your name and address for the record, you could say Medford City Hall and the agency you work for.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Great, thank you so much, Alicia, for the introduction, and thank you all for making the time to have us here today. I'm Brie Hensel, co-founder of Agency Landscape and Planning, and we are the kind of lead for the consulting team, which, as Alicia said, is an interdisciplinary team that has been working to pull this together over the better part of a year. We're very glad to be here. The purpose of tonight is to share the recommendations and some of the actions, the implementation steps, And really welcome your feedback and your questions because we are in the thick of revisions right now and trying to make this the best plan it can be for the city of Medford going forward. So lots of time to give input that we can then revise and make that into the final plan. This plan has been crafted not just by the team and the staff, but also by a really engaged steering committee. So just a lot of gratitude to that group who was very dedicated. We had great participation even throughout the pandemic and people from all neighborhoods within Medford representing small business to youth, to longstanding committed devotees of different things from open space to connectivity. We've been doing this since last March when we kicked off, guided by a lot of that steering committee input as well as community engagement that I'll talk about in a moment. And we're really heading into now the vetting of the plan. We have a written draft. We've shared that publicly. We're getting feedback now and we'll be incorporating that into the fall so that by the time we round out 2022, we should have a plan that you can carry forward and implement in the years to come. just want to set the table with what this comprehensive plan is meant to achieve. It's guided by the Massachusetts general laws and governed by chapter 41 81 D. So it that says that the plan should address 9 different elements have goals have an implementation plan but beyond that it gets a lot of flexibility for customization according to the community and the specific needs of each place. across the state. It's also meant to be kind of a 50,000 foot view that ties everything together that goes deep where it needs to, but really is about bringing together all the different pieces that are interacting across the city and to plan out kind of clearly for the next 10 years and even look ahead out to 30 years. What is the vision and where is Medford going? It really builds on community vision and values that we've received through input. And it brings together a lot of different plans. So this plan was really lucky that the housing production plan was synced up in time, as well as the climate action and adaptation plan, a recent open space plan. So it really integrates and pulls in rather than duplicates those efforts, but tries to reinforce them and give a path so that all those plans can be implemented together. Engagement has been a huge part of this. So we've seen people in person popped up at a lot of different events to try to get people to engage in ways that were easy on their own terms. And we could get a lot of people who might not be able to attend public meetings. We've shared a lot of handouts and gotten written feedback, all of which has been compiled and considered. 15,000 residents were reached via mail to try to make sure that people know this is happening. and have a chance to participate. It was, we did head into the pandemic during the making of this. And so we had a strong web presence, a digital map that we got over a thousand unique kind of comments and replies. And we also did some videos so we could share things in a lot of different ways and get participation. All of that led to really great feedback and discussion I would say these were some of the most fun and interesting public meetings I've been a part of. We had a lot of small group discussions, even in a virtual format. And what that led to was five different plan themes that have really guided and organized the plan. So even though we're addressing those specific elements from land use, housing, economic development, history, open space, public services and mobility, we're doing them in the plan through the lens and guidance of the community of Medford's ideas and what matters to them. And so those are those five themes, looking for open and engaged communication, continuing a welcoming and supportive community, creating and supporting vibrant places, creating access for all across the city, and ensuring climate resiliency. The plan does build on history that's a really important part and you know that that is something that is really present today. So that factors in to the shape of the plan in the shape of the future. And I just wanted to note that there was a lot of analysis in the early part of the plan to digging into everything from kind of understanding the market housing conditions incorporating some of the climate change analysis that predated. And so a kind of deep understanding of place. And this really builds on what was unique and identified things like the idea to keep more spending in the city, try to get more of a work life relationship and create jobs here. So we tried to dig in through analysis to understand what the opportunities were. And the plan also creates a cohesive kind of land use vision for the future. You can see that this is diagrammatic. It's not parcel specific, but what it really identifies is where are those kind of centers and squares that are the heart of the city, where are the kind of secondary spaces that are what we were calling village centers, where you start to have this walkable kind of 15 minute neighborhood and that could be nurtured. What are the gateways to the city, both via transit as well as the kind of thresholds where you need to have a sense of identity for entering Medford? What's the kind of character of the residential neighborhoods that surround from lower to higher density? And then where are these green corridors? We heard tons throughout the community conversations about how Medford is a place that people really appreciate nature, access to nature, and that that happens at all scales. So I'm gonna walk quickly through kind of the five themes, some of the goals that the community came up with, and then show you some of the actions. This isn't comprehensive of all of the actions within the plan, but just some of the highlights. And I'm happy, we're happy to take questions about what we share in these slides, as well as what's deeper within the plan. We heard a lot about this idea that Medford should continue to be a place where there is open and engaged dialogue and communication. that that's essential to the future and to implementing this plan. So the goals that people developed were to maintain and build trust between the city and the community, to make sure that implementation supports community priorities, and to allocate resources effectively. Some of the actions that the plan suggests to achieve those community goals are to issue an annual comprehensive plan update, which can keep people abreast of how the plan is moving forward, to offer communication training to residents and staff, to track participation and make sure that that's representative of the community as a whole and a shifting community at that, and to identify partners who could be a part of it. I think one thing that we heard really loud and clear early on is that Medford is very welcoming and that people who move here feel this sense of engagement in their neighborhoods. On the flip side, we did hear from some communities that it's perhaps not welcoming to all, and so that needs to be continued to be nurtured. And that's really what this chapter is about, supporting and celebrating everything that's working and then making sure everyone's included. So that meant enlivening open spaces and facilities throughout the city, ensuring affordable housing for all for the future and making sure that all histories are honored and that arts and culture are celebrated. Some of the key actions look at kind of beautification within neighborhood and city centers to highlight artists, history and culture, to look at city of Medford facilities and make sure that they're fit out for universal accessibility and that capital needs are met across the board. to dig into housing in the future. One action is to allow multifamily and small diverse housing option through zoning changes, but there's a number that support that. And then to expand the amenities that are provided in both large and small parks to make sure that those are abreast of trends and providing what a variety of users need. The third community theme was vibrant places and people really want to build kind of vibrancy throughout the centers. across Medford. So the key goals that came up is finding ways that people who live in Medford can also work in Medford, so creating jobs, supporting businesses of all sizes, and kind of building a strong workforce, supporting workforce so that they can get those jobs that are created, balancing growth, and then increasing how people can enjoy and access natural resources, knowing that those are tied to vibrancy and tied to economic development. So some of the key actions to support vibrancy across the city are to look at encouraging small-scale neighborhood retail and services in some of those village centers, leveraging some city-owned parcels in really critical places to develop and promote multifamily and mixed-use developments, to attract companies that will have well-paying jobs and can support Medford residents working in Medford and having good access to those jobs, partnering with some institutions and workforce training groups, and then always balancing that vibrancy with thinking about equity and access and looking at some anti-displacement strategies for residential and commercial so that those two pieces play off one another. We talked a lot about accessibility, especially biking and pedestrian safety within the city. And some of the goals that came up there were to really connect and continue to build out this multimodal network, to coordinate mobility and development strategies together, and to improve the experience. So not just about adding a bike lane, but making sure that it's a great experience, a great pedestrian experience and reinforcing that. So a few of the actions that you'll see in the plan range from everything from kind of auditing pedestrian crossings adjacent to schools for safety to looking at the unaccepted streets and thinking about the impacts that they have on management and maintenance. and having a strategy there. Implementing the good work in the 2016 Bicycle Infrastructure Master Plan, especially thinking about east-west connections across the city. Piloting some EV charging stations and looking at the MBTA stations and thinking about the right mix of density and transit-oriented development around them. And then finally, the fifth theme is about climate resilience. So this was a really interesting topic with the community. And it was one I would say that sometimes came up a lot and then sometimes we heard nothing about. And so the first goal here was to really raise awareness and community education. We have the new climate action and adaptation plan in hand. So a good time to do that and to also implement the strategies within it to focus on preserving and enhancing the great natural resources within the city and then supporting health and resilience within the community. So a few of the kind of 17 different actions within this strategy or this theme are about looking at streets and open spaces for stormwater management. We know that kind of Surface flooding is important to manage and plan for. Looking at tree planting and focusing public tree investments, especially in places that are identified as high heat vulnerability and keeping equity in mind there. Adopting environmental performance standards for large projects and then updating flood resilience and design guidelines. So you've seen a bit about kind of the actions that the plan lays out. We've also been diving into a strategy and a framework for implementation and making this happen. So there's a few different components to that implementation strategy. The first is understanding who is needed to champion the plan forward and then who do those champions need to help them along the way. That this isn't something that the city will do by themselves. It's not something that Alicia and her team will do by themselves, but it's really a concerted effort across the city, the community and lots of different partners. The second piece is thinking about the first steps, what's already happening, what's underway, what can be reinforced and what are some of the key initiatives that could be started today. Another piece of implementation is to look at making sure that the plan is implemented in a way that reinforces the goals. So looking at metrics and benchmarks that can track track the changes as they go forward make sure they're positive and in line with the recommendations and then identifying and aligning funding sources. So one of the key components is about how zoning can help to implement the plan. So we know that the zoning codification has been happening, but what the comprehensive plan sets up instead are some kind of content-based changes that help to reinforce how zoning will achieve the goals. And we've looked at that kind of in a couple different ways. One way would be to think about it topically. The Climate Action and Adaptation Plan identified some zoning changes. Some land uses might have to change. Density and affordable housing become important. So implementation of those kind of topical zoning changes would require looking into best practices, more development of the of the language and legal review. We've also kind of identified within the plan this framework of geographic understanding of the city and that can guide zoning changes too. So we talked about the centers and squares, a system of corridors where there might be zoning changes to implement some of the vision. And so that's a geographic framework that gives an understanding of how the land use ties to zoning changes. And I mentioned these benchmarks that can be used to kind of track the plan as it moves forward. One conversation that we had with the steering committee and the public was, how does the plan, how does the community want the city to be moving? And so we talked about what direction should these be moving in, making sure that the number of housing units are increasing, but also measuring things like multifamily. So we have this kind of quantity and qualitative side. We dove into testing the impacts of the actions with the community in some of our conversations as well. And so I just wanted to share this. We looked across a number of different neighborhoods and areas within the city, identified some that might be catalysts or have some near-term projects, and had really fun conversations looking at how these different strategies and actions would land in place and start to really impact people's experience within the city. And then lastly, I just wanted to direct everyone to the document online. So happy to answer questions about that. The full draft is online now. We've been getting feedback from staff and others. We've really tried within that document to always connect the community feedback into the recommendations and give people a clear way to navigate through it and understand it and find the pieces that matter to them. And so with that, we're happy to take some questions, comments, things that might inform our further revisions of the plan really appreciate the council's input, but along the way I know many of you have attended our meetings participated in the steering committee and help to shape the plan. the next step so that we'll take the feedback today as well as from the public, online, and through staff over the next couple weeks. And we'll be working to address all the comments through some work sessions with city staff. And then we'll be taking a revised plan through the approvals process. So I will pause there and welcome any thoughts, comments, hello, and questions.
[Unidentified]: staff to share.
[Richard Caraviello]: Yes. Thank you, Mr. President. Um I was on the committee from the beginning and uh yes and we had a lot of good discussion, a lot of things um but I think you you you made a comment a few minutes ago was um the direction of the community.
[Unidentified]: Mm hmm.
[Richard Caraviello]: And I I think this is where um we come into. I don't I don't know if the You know, we've talked about a lot of good things here, and I'm in agreement with a lot of stuff here, but a lot of stuff we talk about involves density. And people in this community, we want stuff that comes along with the density, but we don't want to accept some of this other stuff that comes with it. Density is what brings businesses to the community. There's a reason why Malden, and some of them in Cambridge, If that's all right, because there's people businesses want to come where there's people. We don't have enough people here, no matter how we know. So like you said, direction, do we want to be a small community? Or I don't think we, I don't think the community itself knows which way it wants to go. And I think that's really the biggest thing. And I saw that and over the, over time, I would have liked to have seen more engagements from property owners that are all involved in these squares. I didn't see many of them even attending the meeting to come, which is a shame because we can all have great ideas with your property, but the property owners are the ones that actually make the decision. So I think through the offices, I think we need to maybe make a little subcommittee out of this where go to each area that we define what we want to grow and get those business owners and say, hey, would you like to put a second floor on your building? Because there's room in some of these squares to expand and do more things. So I think that should be our next step is to engage the property owners to figure out what they want to do and find out how we can help them, maybe help them get financing or explain to them what options they have. They may not even know what options they have. A lot of them are landlords that haven't been involved in the community forever. So I think that's where we need to be going forward.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, thank you. I'll just comment quickly. I think those are both really great points. And the first piece around density, that was, I would say, some of the most interesting conversations that we had. And one of the nice things that I think emerges is that that land use plan at the future land use plan you can kind of see places that might change and then places made that may change last. And so there's a little bit of a way to balance both of those things and have some of that increased density but also maintain some of what people really want to hang on to so that can be achieved. I think you're totally right about that property owners to and that's that's what you know.
[Richard Caraviello]: West Medford Square is primed for development. We've got that little square down by Tufts Park where you get all those people. I think you could probably get them into doing something over there. Same thing with Haines Square. They're ready to, I think they're ready to, I think the whole thing is ready to go. It's just, I think it needs a little, someone has to give them a little push or a little, a little guidance, let them know what's available to them and we should offer as much help as we can. I think we're on the verge, we're just not quite there yet.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Caraviello.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you so much for all of your work with this project, to the steering committee, and to the Office for Planning and Development and Sustainability. I think this is a mark of progress in our city, and I'm very happy to be talking about it today and very happy to see where it goes. Um, I guess I just had some questions scattered a little bit all over the place, or some notes as well. I think my first note was about, um, I totally agree with the importance of bike and walking infrastructure in the city especially as someone who doesn't usually drive. I would like to see more in this report about how we're working with different cities around Medford, different municipalities that border Medford, in order to see how we're integrating with different communities, how we're making sure those bike lanes and sidewalks integrate well. There's some of that in the bicycle infrastructure plan, but it is quite vague in there. And so I would be curious as to what are we doing now? What are the challenges that we face currently? And what's the plan to get over those humps?
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, really great point about the bike lanes and the kind of network here not existing in a vacuum and the coordination.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. Another point I've heard from some people, I think there's room in this plan for it. There's definitely, I think it could fit into some of it, but just to note that I've heard from some residents and that I've been talking about is, the idea of building community centers or public spaces for immigrant groups or nonprofits and startups. And there's some really cool stuff in there about incubation hubs and workforce training. So that's something that residents have noted, that I've noted, that I think works well with this plan and could be great to be acknowledged. And so I guess with the going to the implementation section on something that I think would help help me and I think would help the city is a sense of what our priorities are and I think I'm. a bunch of the different reports that our cities have, our city has seen have sections that kind of allude to what needs to be done first, second, third, you know, what needs, what's more long-term planning. I think that would help us on the council and help city, help the city offices determine, you know, what, with all these different goals, what should we be tackling first and what, you know, what steps need to go first for us to tackle the next few steps. And another, I think, general note about the implementation section is that when it comes to the funding sources, I would love to have a picture of how much each of these grants gives, how much we need to source from a general fund, and a picture of, you know, ARPA funding goes until this date. These grants are open until this date. what requirements does our city need to meet first in order to qualify for all these funding sources? Because there's quite a lot in here. And will these funding sources really cover the goals that we have in this plan? And just generally, do we have the capacity at city hall right now for the grant writers and the grant managers to take care of all these grants if we want to apply for them? Um, and I think that was a, that was a general note. I think, I think for now I would want other Councilors to ask questions and then if, uh, if there are no more questions after that, I might have some. Thank you. Thank you.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Thank you so much for being here today and thank you so much and everybody that you've been involved with and putting the comprehensive plan together. I know it's been. a real marathon of a project. And when I was reading over the draft a few weeks ago, most of the comments right off the top of my head were just, sounds great, sounds great, sounds great. It's clear that this has been a really robust community engagement process. Of course, as Councilor Caraviello said, we can always do better when it comes to engaging the community. And I hope that we'll continue to do that outreach and implementation. But this is a really, incredible compendium of things that we need to do, things we urgently need to do, you know, tasks along the way. So my first set of comments is just thank you so much reading it, it got me really excited for this vision that I'd really love to see implemented. The second point that I want to make it's Councilor Tseng already touched on. And this was my other big takeaway reading the draft is, and of course we had the draft implementation chapter in front of us, thanks to Amanda, the, how are we going to, different contingency scenarios for how are we going to pay for this? And I think that that's, like Councilor Tseng already sort of delineated, The biggest thing on my mind is, even for sort of the top level tasks, do we already have the capacity for this is the biggest concern on my mind. You know, just doing a quick scan before this meeting. You know I'm always impressed by how much the PDS department is able to take on. but for every additional task, are we supporting the staff capacity to do the preliminary steps? Do we have the capacity to take on increased communication steps? And if we don't right now, what are exactly the steps to get there? I think when I read this, the thing that I'm sort of envisioning for like the next page after the report ends is the bird's eye view on for each project, the budgetary needs for that, and then the contingency plan. Like, okay, this is an incredible list of grant-making organizations. If we don't get one for task X in a given year, how short are we? If we don't have the revenue improvement that we expect to see, how short are we? Those different, because implementation of all these projects and goals feel so, so urgent. You know, I think what I'm looking for is that pie chart of, If we don't get this where else does it come from and I know that that's I'm not saying that is something that I expect to see in a preliminary draft that some not yet finished because of course that's all very conditional but looking at this from a implementation standpoint, you know that leaps out to me is I'm sure just everybody else. Thank you.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Thank you. No, both those comments I think linked and very helpful. We've been trying to figure out with the PDS team how to make the implementation chapter the most useful, clearly communicate to the community what's being done and in progress and then what could be done, but then also lay out some helpful pieces. So I think that piece is one of the ones that's more in progress as we figure out what's gonna be the most helpful content. So that's really helpful.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes, please. I thought that I might add to that as well, that I don't want anybody to think that everything in here is going to be done by one office. As you go through the implementation chapter, there are different stewards for the different, so each action has somebody, some department that is responsible, and they're not all the planning office. Some is engineering and DPW and the mayor's office. And they all have partners who else should be working on these actions, because we can't do these alone, and a lot of those are community groups and commissions and stuff and people that we can. work with as well on it. And with funding, it's interesting because there are a lot of choices and it depends on what's the right money at the right time. So it's not like, well, if we miss this grant this year, well, we're out of luck. We might come around and get that next year. Or there's another option. Sometimes we want to move quickly on a project, so we'll go with one funding source rather than another. simply because the project's ready at the right time of year for it. So there are, a lot of it is moving pieces and putting that puzzle together is some of what we do. And actually, I just want to add since I'm up here, something that Brie wouldn't know is that there are draft copies of the plan at the library. So if people would like to flip through it, there are several copies at the library that people can look at. And we have copies at our office, but it is more comfortable to sit at the library. You can sit at one of their tables and flip through them. and it's available online as well, the URL medfordcompplan.org. If you go there, you can link to the plan and the implementation chapter, and there's a form for providing feedback. So I just wanted to share those pieces.
[Unidentified]: Thank you, Councilor Collins. I'm just gonna see if Councilor, President Morell or Councilor Scarpelli, if you have anything, and then we'll go to you Councilors. Seeing none, I will go to Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Mr. President. I made the point that this is a daunting task. to do this. And to think we're going to do it in one fell swoop is by one or two people isn't going to happen. It's going to take a lot of work by a lot of people to get this done. But the other thing is, we're going to get some... We're going to look for some grant money, but the real money is going to come from private money for these property owners. And they're the ones that are going to have to make a decision do we wanna upgrade our property to make it look better and to help the city get more rents and that all in turn, everything all works in turn. City gets more taxes, they get more rent, more people come in, more business come in. It's all works in turn here, but we're kind of in a little bit of a difficult time right now. Interest rates are high. I think we're, I mean, too bad we couldn't have jumped on this when the rates were down, that 2% now they're up to 6% or 7%. So I think that might slow down some private development. But if we can maybe help these businesses find funding sources, I mean, I don't know if the government has some loan programs for them. I think that's gonna really get the ball rolling on these things. Like I said, I think maybe we start with one square at a time to try to do multiple areas at a time. We'd be setting ourselves up for failure. I think we need to identify which policy we want to do first and start small and then let people see what we can do and what other people can do. And then we know where we're going. So I say, so I don't wanna let people believe that, you know, I'm gonna get all this grant money to get all this work done. We'll get some grant money. We're not gonna get all the grants that we need, but the real money is gonna come from the private sector. So I wanna just, so it makes people, don't let people think they're gonna get grants to put another story on their building.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: You're right.
[Richard Caraviello]: If we can help them identify funding sources, maybe through government loan programs, which could be out there, but this is kind of a lousy time to be building. There's building costs and equipment, everything is kind of sky high. Yeah.
[Unidentified]: Thank you, Councilor Caraviellolo. Any comments from other Councilors?
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. I guess I'll go to my few short questions. I would love to know what the, you know, you reached out to a bunch of residents and all of that. I would love to know what work was done to reach out to residents who don't primarily speak English as a household language.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we tried a number of variety of different things. We, we built in interpretation to the early public meetings and also had worked with the Office of Prevention who had community liaisons to try to connect in there. Some of our early focus groups to were with some of the cultural organizations and so we were able to get a little bit of a sense of reaching out there. Alicia may have other direct comments too about some of the events, but we tried to build that in very early. I think we did have a sense that always more needs to be done. And so that's part of what led to open and engaged communication becoming, you know, a really high level theme that we need to continue to build that into everything. And so yeah, translations, but then yeah, the liaisons became really important.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. The Office of Outreach and prevention, one of the other consultants, I think Emily actually met with the outreach liaisons as a focus group to talk about whether she should meet with people or whether they should go out and meet with the people that they talk with and then bring her information back, which is in the end the way they decided would be more effective. So we worked through that group primarily to reach out to other groups. I'm trying to think if there were other specific things.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: That was the feedback that we got that those kind of pre-existing relationships needed to be the pipeline at this point. Right.
[Justin Tseng]: Great. That's helpful to know, helpful for residents to know, I think is something we should spotlight. And I would assume with the feedback process, we're also doing similar work to reach out to communities.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes. Right. So with the draft, we've actually sent it to them and asked them for their comments as well. Um, outreach and preventions also engage some, uh, consultants on equity. Um, and we asked them to read through the document and provide us with feedback and input on how to engage people and how, what kind of recommendations, because there are recommendations in here about engaging with the community and outreach and how to do that. And so we asked them to really provide us feedback on these thoughts and to make recommendations as to what those recommendations should be for the city going forward.
[Justin Tseng]: Great. When it comes to the displacement section in here, I was wondering if in an updated draft of the report or in a forum such as this, you could give us a better idea of what the displacement toolkit looks like. It seems, it just sounds a little vague from what I've read. I think there are some policies in here that are more concrete, but it might be helpful for us to know what other cities are doing when it comes to displacement, their displacement toolkit.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, really good question. I think what we're seeing too is that sometimes those are specific to different topics like parks and open space, there's a whole set of best practices around kind of significant investments to public realm that can then catalyze property value changes and thinking about planning in advance for that. So it could be that there is an open space and public realm toolkit. Small businesses and businesses in general were identified too as needing to be thought ahead about in terms of supporting them. So that could be kind of a separate set of tools that communities are often developing specifically to support that group. And then there's the residential piece, right? And so the housing, especially for renters, I think, are where a lot of the tools come in. And some of those are alluded to, I think, around the renters within this. But yeah, that would be a big piece where people often have kind of a separate piece. So I think that's what we're seeing mostly is that you kind of can't have one size fits all. And even though some of the strategies are reinforcing around kind of what we were talking about in the last question with reaching out to people, having those relationships and that set of communications so you can provide the tools. Some of them are specific to the type of change that's happening in a specific place.
[Justin Tseng]: Yeah. It would be very interesting for us to know what are the policies that would target these different groups the best, what policies you hear people talking about that seems like there's interest there or political support there. That might be helpful for us to know.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that could be a place where we build out a little bit of some case studies, I think a little bit more.
[Justin Tseng]: That'd be excellent.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[Justin Tseng]: And I think this is my last question. There's one bullet point in here about using data to show how new initiatives and capital requests can make progress. I was wondering what that looked like on the ground. So I believe there's an allusion to Cambridge in this case study. What are the policies or what's the approach the city would adopt? Would it be an administration developing new guidelines?
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm trying to remember exactly the one you're pointing to. Is it within opening gauge communication? It's kind of about, I think that that one specifically was about two things. Well, making sure that budget requests and how money is spent reinforces what is, you know, the closest thing to a community vision. And so ties back to the plan and shows how it's implementing these recommendations and actions. And so that was one piece and using, making sure that, One conversation we had with the city engineer is kind of a real desire to have data that allows the tracking of spending on capital improvements. And that would let you understand equitable investment across the city and all those different pieces. So I think kind of centralizing that data and then using it to track progress. That's what that was getting at, but also making it transparent. So you alluded to Cambridge has been doing a lot with data and then making sure that all of that is communicated to the public. So don't just have the data in a room where decisions are made, but share it back publicly on website and easily accessible. Yeah.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Councilor Tseng. Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Mr. President. In all due respect to Councilor Tseng, I see minimal displacement here. If anything, we're going to enhance this. Again, there's nothing to displace here. So everything we're looking to do is only is to increase housing, increase business. So there should be no displacement of really anything in this. Am I speaking correctly or? I think there's a- I think minimal, if anything, with the displacements.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: I think there's a tension there that both are true and both are possible.
[Richard Caraviello]: The goal of this plan is to enhance and replace, enhance, and to bring on housing. We're not taking off any housing. I don't think we're kicking anybody out of any housing to even do this. So everything that's in this plan is to enlarge and increase the housing in the business. So I don't see any displacement happening in the community.
[SPEAKER_11]: I think the worry is, and we, again, they're, oops, sorry, I'm just gonna.
[Zac Bears]: No fair. Can Councilor Tseng respond? Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. You forget sometimes. I think though, I think the worry, I think you alluded, it's a tension and we don't know which forces are going to win out. It's just the possibility that gentrification could take place or a rising property tax, rising property values could lead to higher rents, which could push out families who've lived here.
[Richard Caraviello]: And the answer to that is you are correct. That is going to happen. And when you do these projects, this is what happens. We talk about housing is great, but we're a victim of success. The reason people are living here is because we're a good community to live in. And that drives up property values. And everything we're going to look to do here, I hate to say it, but it's going to drive the value of property up, not down. And I say gentrification happens. I mean, that's just the way of life. I mean, I know we try as best we can to stop it, but like I say, this whole plan is about gentrification and building up. And it will cause prices to rise. I mean, I think if we sat here and said to ourselves it wasn't going to happen, I think we'd all be lying to ourselves. But as I say, if a property owner is going to add two floors onto his property, his property value is going to go up. And they're going to charge the rent that goes along with it. You know, you remember now, we have two train stations here now, which if you look at people living up in the hillside in the south, rents are already going crazy. And this was the bad, this is, so the train station's good, it's bad. So there's always, there's a give and a take in everything. It's great to have a train station, but the property owners, everybody, people who own houses, everyone's house in that area It's probably taking a $50,000 to $75,000 increase in value. So that's the plus. But the bad is we're forcing all of the people.
[Justin Tseng]: I just wanted to say, you know, my, my intention is not to hold back the plan. It's just, it's exactly what you said. I, you know, there's a lot of forces we can't stop. It's just a question of what's the, what can we do? You know, what, what can we do? What's the, what's the very little that we can do as a city?
[Richard Caraviello]: Yeah, I know. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a given, it's a really, it's a given taken. It's a very tough balancing act to figure out. But like I said, we're a victim of success. And we're a victim of where we, you know, we're five miles from Boston. Somerville is all built out. Cambridge is all built out. Somerville is all built out. What's left? That's us. And, you know, and this is, they say, this is what's going to happen. People are coming here now to build and live because they can't go to these other places now.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng and Councilor Caraviello. I'm going to jump in and say that I think a key goal of a comprehensive plan and quite frankly, the functioning of municipal government is to mitigate those impacts. I don't necessarily think we're a victim of success. I think we're a victim of a failure to plan. which is one of the reasons that we're doing this. And, you know, we've seen a massive, massive increases in the property value of the community as a whole and the taxable property value of the community as a whole. We've chosen as a community to say all of that increased value, even though a big part of it is about being in Medford, being within the borders of this municipality, that value will accrue to property owners only. And the city is not going to take action to have some of those resources be used to spread the benefits of our location or our transportation resources or vibrant communities to make sure that we can both grow and improve the community and support people in keeping them. I think as a 28 year old who grew up here, we have a massive displacement crisis. None of my friends live here anymore. No one I grew up with lives here, unless they live in a unit that's owned by their family or they're one of the five people who makes enough money to rent here. So I think that's because the city has not kept up with its obligation to make sure that the benefits of growth and the benefits of growing property values are distributed as widely and as equitably as possible. And I think that should be a goal of the comprehensive plan. And I think it should be the goal. I mean, if we say that making improvements, improving our roads and sidewalks and parks and bringing in new business and building new things, that that is only going to benefit people who can afford to live here after it's done, I don't think we're doing our job. And I think there's a lot of ways that we can use policy and come together in city government to find ways where sure the property owner is gonna win out. If they have a one story thing with 10, five or 10 storefronts in it, and suddenly they can build a four story building, keep the storefronts, keep all the rent there, maybe the rent there goes up, they have improvements in the square that they're in, and there's 50 units above it, they're gonna do great. Now should 10 or 20 of those units be, income restricted so that the people who live in that neighborhood can afford to live there after and before. I think that's a fair deal. And that's what I think we have to look at. I think there's a way to say this city can grow and succeed and we can enhance everything that we want to enhance while mitigating the negative impacts that we may have. So, um, thank you for my speaking from the chair and getting involved in that debate. I will go to Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you, vice president bears. And, um, Yeah, I appreciate this discussion and Councilor Caraviello, you know, I have to applaud you for kind of saying it straight, you know, which is that, you know, we're looking at tools like this, you know, hypothetical projects like this. I think your point is correct that unmitigated, we have to be clear about the effects that unmitigated improvements have on the community and it's why I ran for office. I think it's why several of us ran for offices to talk about mitigating and making sure that those benefits, as Vice President Bears put it, are spread around and benefiting the entire community. I think that this actually gets me to a better way of articulating my concerns about the framework of budgeting around this entire discussion, which again, I want to emphasize, I don't see that as like a flaw or a void in the plan, but something that I kind of want to insist on bringing it up in this building to make sure that we're planning to support this plan planning to support them through the various stages of its implementation. Clearly a lot of the projects that are articulated in this are sort of to to a certain extent are discrete projects that we can benchmark and have beginning in the middle of an end and then a recitation but they're more or less discrete and we you know they are appropriate for sort of like time limited funding streams, maybe grants or mix which is very helpfully described here. But in addition to that, as the community changes, even if it's changing for the better overall, we have specific budgetary needs to support projects. And then we also have diffuse needs. These tasks are specific needs. Our needs as a city are general and they can't be placed into buckets. And I think this gets back to one of my primary obsessions for what we talk about in this room, which is just the need for generalized availability and capacity of the city to support constituents in a changing community. And that's not tied to any specific thing in the plan, but I think that it has to be an accessory to everything that we're funding about specifically here, that we need more robust resources for our general fund, for our generalized municipal capacity for working on issues like figuring out how to fight displacement, you know, among many other things, because we know that that's going to be a fight that we'll have to improve our response to as we do any of this. And I think that we should do all of it, but that means that we have to get strong in our overall bandwidth as well. So I just wanted to insert that. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Collins. Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you. Councilor Bears is right. His friends can't afford to live in this community. The honest truth is, if I didn't own my house, I couldn't afford to live here. You know, I bought a house 40 years ago, and unfortunately, you know, back when I bought my house, it was, you know, I struggled back then, but now my kids don't, only one of my children live here. They can't afford to live here. They moved out to Tewksbury and all those other communities because they can't afford it. And I really, I sympathize with Councilor Bears, you know, when he's going to have to, if he wants to stay in the community. I mean, everybody in this community has a million dollar house. Million dollar houses are like the norm now. The market has softened a little bit. It's came down a little bit, but the price came down a little bit, but it hasn't come down to an affordable level for a young person to come in. Unless you're a young professional making a lot of money, then that's who gets to move here. when we move on with these projects, I mean, we have some things in place for inclusionary housing for when projects go up and we'll do our best to implement them and maybe we could change them. We'll work with the people who, if and when they wanna develop things. But like I said, I know Council Member Beza is saying we're not a victim of success. We are. Yeah, I mean, I say, you know, for some reason, eight years ago, the city went from a city that no one ever knew about to a city on fire. And that's when really, that's when everyone's property got, I mean, everyone, everybody likes, everybody owns a house in the city. They love that. Wow, geez, I get a night, I get a pretty good assessment. When I go to the bank, I can borrow a lot of money in my house. What happens when the market goes bad and people, Again, I'm older than everybody in this room here. People don't remember the 1980s, the 1990s, when many people in this community, their house was underwater when the interest rates were 18%. And I was a person, I bought a house in the 80s. And at one point, my house was valued for less than what I paid for it. So I said, you know, they say, People haven't seen what bad times are like in this community. When you own a house, and the bank's knocking on your door, and you can't afford to pay for it, and when you go to sell it, you can't sell it for what you paid for it. So that has to be taken into consideration. I mean, look back. We talk about history, and everything is about history. history is gonna repeat itself again. I mean, these rates and these prices can't last forever. I know we've been saying that for a while, but the train is gonna come to an end at some point. And people who bought these million dollar houses in Medford are gonna feel the hurt like people did in the late 80s and early 90s. So please take that into consideration.
[Unidentified]: Thank you, Councilor Caraviello. Councilor Scarpelli, do you have anything? I just want to check in with you. All right.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Thank you, Councilor. You guys are doing a great job, so I appreciate it. All right. Great. Thanks. Thanks, George. Any from the three of you? I have a bunch of stuff, but I've been holding on. All right, if you don't mind, I will go into my list of things. So I wrote a nine page comment on this comprehensive plan and submitted it. So you all have that. So I will not go into the full details of that. And I appreciate the communications and have appreciated being on the steering committee and all the work that everyone's put in. And this is something that, I've been, you know, a process that I've really been hoping to see get off the ground since I first thought about running for city council. I think we really need to have a comprehensive plan for the community. And so I'm glad to see that we are, you know, nearing the end of getting something drafted and finalized and approved. With that, if you read my comment letter, you know that I have a lot of thoughts about how it could be improved before finalized. And maybe could be improved in future iterations. I don't think all of my comments will, it would be possible to incorporate all of my comments in the time allotted. So just want to kind of get to a few thoughts on it. One is that I think doing a, creating a comprehensive plan like this and putting out there such significant goals and things that we want to do as a community raises expectations. I think raising expectations is a good thing. I think there's a lot of people who have felt that the expectations of city government are not matching what they expect from city government. And I think this is one way that we can start to close that gap a little bit. But I also really worry that if we raise expectations and then don't have the capacity to fulfill those expectations, that we're setting ourselves up for failure. I think, you know, maybe a better way I should have phrased what I said, it isn't that we're not victims of success, it's that we're victims of failure to plan for success. And, you know, so planning is good, but I think it needs to meet the scope of the challenges we have. And, you know, we have a comprehensive plan and that's and it's not on not on you guys because you're just helping us come up with the plan, although you know there's a piece of it that is about implementation and moving on after and how we can keep up with it, but we're going to need comprehensive solutions and a comprehensive implementation process and comprehensive funding to go along with the comprehensive plan. I kind of broke my big concerns up into three areas. I think we face some serious crises in the community. One of them is the housing cost burden crisis. And I know that that's, that's talked about in here, but I think to councilor Caraviello's point, the scope of that challenge is significant and the solutions and the level of resources that we would need to inject or redistribute in a city like this to really make a difference, you know, probably are outside of the scope of what we can do. Now that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to aspire to that and do what we can. But I also think to Councilor Kravula's point, there's a lot of regional and national factors here that are going to keep, you know, places in Houston, exurbs and Florida, and places like that, they're going to have serious issues with 6% interest rates and demands are really going to negatively affect them. Places within five miles of the urban core of a city like Boston, we're going to have high demand for a long time. We're going to have regional pressures pushing up housing prices for a long time. And I think that means that we need to be really ambitious and transformative and bold about what we're talking about when it comes to the cost of housing and how we can stop further displacement. And even if we're lucky, help welcome some people back and to bring us back to the place of economic diversity that we had 20 or 30 years ago. I mean, I don't think we're ever I hope one day we can reach that I think probably not even within the 30 year scope of this plan is that necessarily achievable but we need to be bold and we need to build bold partnerships with the people in our region to say what, what can we do as Medford what is our part of the solution to this problem and then what is the regional solution to this problem so that everyone is sharing the burden and, and everyone is pushing in the right direction. by implementing a plan like this, and the housing production plan, we're kind of joining that club, which I think is really good. But I think that there are places in here where it falls short around housing. And I'll get into that in a minute. I think around the budget and funding question, which has really come up a lot. We're talking about if we wanted to do everything in here over 30 years, right? We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars, probably billions of dollars over 30 years of public investment by the city and likely a significant chunk of that above what we are currently raising and spending. You know, capital funding for city infrastructure. I could give you a billion dollars off the top of my head. High school, fire headquarters, 200 million on roads and sidewalks. And that's just the backlog. That's not talking about bike lanes and pedestrian improvements and, you know, building out things like Tufts Square and Haines Square. And I mean, you know, and we have some projects around that, you know, we're hitting it piecemeal. We have a little bit better in Tufts Square and Haines Square is starting in a couple of weeks and, you know, it'll be a little bit safer. it'll be improved, but it's, it's a piecemeal solution to a comprehensive problem. And so kind of a few things that I'd like to see around that would be going to what councilor Collins said, if possible, a little more scoping of what ideas like the goals that are included in here might cost or an estimated range You know, we just say invest so that capital is universally, you know, all of our capital infrastructure is universally accessible for all. Love the goal. Is that $500 million? Is it a billion dollars? Because I think really making those questions and goals concrete will allow us to have the conversation about how do we want to fund our city budget. I know that the PDS office is probably office number one in the city for bringing in grants. and managing grants and doing that without the resources maybe to, I think people sometimes are overstretched by that. And I think that's really good. And we can have a list of 20 places that we wanna go for grants and bring them in. And I think that's really beneficial, but we're not going to fix 150, $200 million in streets and sidewalk backlogs with grants. It's just not gonna happen. So a place where I think this comprehensive plan really could help guide us in a way that I, and I have some questions about kind of how we got there a little bit later in my scribblings, is to say, there's really two main sources that this city has at its disposal under its sole authority to raise the revenue we need to fix these things. One of them is around land use and development and new growth. We're a city that has had very low new growth for a very long time. So I think I'd love to see a little bit more in here about where can we, you know, how is land use policy and addressing, you know, meeting some of these community goals, how can that also meet the goal of raising revenue. And, you know, even a little bit about what the timeline and scope would need to be, right? If we start small and see what we can do, where does that get us in 10 years? If we go big and do a big land use change in a few different places at once, what could that potentially bring to us? Because I think that will help us understand, what is the limit even of the revenue that we can bring in to solve problems through new growth and development alone? The second piece I think is, our taxation authority, proposition two and a half. You hear me talk about it all the time, but we know we're not gonna build a new high school on permit fees and we're not gonna fix $200 million in roads and sidewalks on grants. So where are the places in the plan where development could really, new development and different ways of land use and growth could really help us. And then where are places in the plan where The scope is so big or the, or the challenge is so significant that we are going to have to have a serious conversation as city leadership, mayor, city council, residents, community groups, and then ask the voters, you know, put together a plan and go to the voters and say, here are the pieces of this plan that we want to, that we think that changing our land use goals could fund and fix. And here are the places in the plan where we have really urgent needs. that are going to require additional investment from the community or go unsolved. And just be direct about that's a choice that we have as a community, as a polity. So that would be really helpful. There's a few other things I didn't mention here, but climate resilience. I think Alicia probably knows better than anyone, the long-term costs of climate resilience and what that's gonna take. And fingers crossed, we have some good federal governments and state investments that can really help us along with that and see it as the regional and national problem that it is. Maybe not, and you know, we can't let the city flood. So at some point we're going to have to do something. You know, the bike plan's been around for six years. There's pieces of it that have been implemented, but by and large, it's not implemented because it's a funding question. And then this, you know, opening and engaged communities or communication, you know, the data infrastructure, the outreach infrastructure, the communication staff, constituent services staff, really are needing significant investment. I think we're talking about millions if not tens of millions in some capital investment and then probably millions of dollars in additional staff capacity if we really want to achieve the goals that are outlined in the plan. So that budget question is just kind of my first box. I think being more honest and I'm not saying that we're being dishonest in the plan, but being more clear and direct about those big questions, I think will help us to better have the conversations to move us towards some of the goals around implementation here. So I'll pause there. I have two more, but I'll pause there, kind of ask a question and see what you think about what I just said. And if it's even possible to get there in this iteration of the plan, but I'm just wondering kind of, you know, you went through the process of how the plan was created. Um, when the question of funding and budget came up, what, you know, how, how did you as an internal team kind of decide to approach that? Um, and maybe why am I wrong about why, what I just said shouldn't be in there or couldn't be in there based on what you guys discussed?
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: I think, um, well, I mean, I think we're hearing pretty consistent things across this group and then also, um, the kind of feedback about capacity and kind of strengthening kind of making clear implementation we've heard from staff to really wanting to figure out how do we implement this how do we make clear human resources are needed to do it. As well as as well as funding and so here that I think we'll think about how to make that more clear as well as the connections between the different pieces between growth and between funding and that time I think the idea of giving some magnitude to the pieces we have to talk a little bit more about. I have some reservations there too. But I hear you on the wanting to give it some tangibility and also just communicate the significance of the investment and what that means. So I think there's some ways to do that. And I think that's important.
[Alicia Hunt]: So thank you for that. I just think that I'll add, Councilors. So I'm trying to figure out how the best way to sort of phrase this is I really see the comprehensive plan is a very broad high level plan with like areas that need to be looked in more depth. And I'd like to bring your attention to the climate plan, which actually has some of the levels of specificity that I hear some of you asking for. Now, admittedly, it does not go into economic development, that is not its area. So I'm not trying in any way to say that it's addressing that. But things like We need an additional transportation planner to implement the recommendations in this section is in fact one of the actions in there right like there's about five different places where there are specific recommendations on meeting staff to manage the capacity that's there and there's a number of very specific things around accessibility and transportation. Um, particularly that I see an infrastructure, uh, roads that get to the level of detail that I hear the council really begging for. Um, and I'm happy to, to share some more of that. Um, uh, I have some slides in a spreadsheet that, uh, I used last night that I'm happy to, uh, share with the rest of you. Um, that sort of gets into that just cause I feel like that's what I'm hearing. and that plan has that level of detail in it. The bike plan is what it could be six years ago. We actually have some staff who are very diligently working on a new bicycle infrastructure plan that's much more detailed, that is much more aggressive, and also looks at what's practical. She's both going out there, taking measurements in riding areas and our bike our transportation team works closely with Somerville to say how can we make connections happen and where do we have overlap. I love that when we have a development project on a border, we actually, we say we'd like to see this extended into Somerville. And the developer goes, I don't know if Somerville will let us. And we say, yes, they will. But no, they will. We talk to them. It'll be fine. Because we do try to coordinate more with them on those things. So I just, I think that you will see more of this in here that you're asking for. But I also want to point you to some of these other plans. open space plan also has it. And frankly, we need more in-depth economic development studies. We have grant funding, and we are in the process of putting out an RFP for a consultant to do a Wellington area economic development study, looking at what is the density. We should be looking at something that would involve talking to the property owners there. We've begged some of those property owners to speak to us. Sometimes we get stopped by their staff. We wonder if our messages always get through. Um, and there's also we're getting, you know, we put out the RFI for the, the one over in. Thank you. I want to say Wellington, but Wellington station is the difficulty. So I just wanted to call your attention that we are starting to do some of those deeper studies because we don't have it in the economic development area.
[Zac Bears]: That's, that's appreciated. And, and, um, just as a follow up, I think maybe, given what I'm hearing from what you're saying, you know, maybe a recommendation or a thought part of the implementation plan or an action step somewhere in here is, and I think I may have suggested something like this in my comments, but like doing that next step, it's taking a full scope of the need of the city relative to these goals. What does that mean financially and budgetarily so that we can then have the information we need to have the conversations about how we're going to get there. I think, um, I just think that clarity really will need to be, that will need to be more clear in here as to say, you know, this is a broad scope. These are goals that people like. Here are the next steps about how we can get down to the dollars and cents of what that means and how long it will take and the amounts it will take because it's hard to have the conversation. It's easy to say we want these things and then it's hard to have the conversation and it gets easier to have the conversation about how we actually achieve the goals and the plan. when we're able to scope them and understand, what is the need? If this is our goal, what is the need budgetarily to get there? I think that would be really valuable, probably easier than finding a cost figure for every goal. And I appreciate that some of our plans are in a place where we have that level of detail. And I just also think that maybe as a next step there, I would hate to say we have to have five more plans on each of these different areas to get to a place, right? Because I feel like, you know, we could end up in an endlessly iterative planning process where by the time we have a land use plan for all the areas we wanna talk about, we're five years later and then things cost something different and maybe the goals have changed. And so I do think figuring out a way to put that in as a next step recommendation, but also like, can we get to a place where we move from the planning, you know, maybe we're never fully moving away from the planning stage, right? We're always iterating the plan and improving it. But I really just think like that people really are asking for that bold and transformative action. At least I'm asking for that bold and transformative action and then figuring out better ways to have the conversation to get there would be really helpful outcome. Thank you. Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Mr. President. No, I think, I think the ultimate goal here is the betterment of the city and the development of the city. But currently, right now, we're riding a very dangerous bubble. I know we've got a lot of eggs in this life science basket. with the rise project. We've got the commercial street, the two pieces of property over there. We've got the Mill Creek project. We've got stuff going on at GE. We've got Mystic Avenue. We've got the Fellsway. So we're riding a wave that is gonna come to an end soon because this life science project, this bio thing is gonna end. Again, being the oldest person in the room, you people don't remember telecom city, remember? Telecom city was gonna be the savior, but everything and all our worries are gonna go away. Well, we're riding that same bubble now with this life science thing. And you were at the meeting a couple of weeks ago on Mystic Avenue, 60 years, we've been talking about fixing Mystic Avenue, nothing has gone there. And we're suffering because we haven't put a shovel in the ground in this city in the last four years. How much was the building permit fee for that project on Mystic Avenue? What did he tell you? It was $12 million. $12 million for here, for a piece of paper. And the sad part is, we're not going to see the fruit of that for four to five years. And the same thing, we've got a project, you know, Mill Creek on the parkway there. They're paying $100,000 in change in taxes. When that building goes up, their tax bill goes up to $7 or $8 million now. So we have all these projects that we're on the cusp of doing. We're not quite there yet. But if we don't hurry up and do them before this bubble breaks, you're not going to see another wave come through the city for another 10 years. And this is how we get money. This is how we increase our tax base. And say, we've got a lot of stuff on the fire, but we don't want the fire to die. And so we need to strike while this iron is hot, because as I say, these phases or whatever you want to call them, come and go. quickly. And I say, as you can see, there's a lot of property available in Boston because everyone's working from home now. And the need for all these buildings that are now vacant, they're enticing other companies to come in where they don't even have the bills. So again, the ultimate goal is to get our city building. But I say, And I said, there's a lot of things on the fire, but it was like, we have to strike. Otherwise, we're going to see another telecom city where it's going to pass us by. And we're going to say we waited too long. And again, I know everyone is doing their best, but we have to work a little, we got to work a little faster and get things in the ground and get them up and going. Because this is how we increase our tax base. And I hate to say this on the bad way, but these building perimeter fees, they're kind of like free money. You know, I mean, you know, there's not a lot of work to go, you know, other than, you know, the inspections go on there, but, and then, you know, there's mitigation that comes along with these projects that the city gets. You know, then this is how you get the sidewalks and, you know, this is how we get all those little things that we want by increasing taxes, building permits fees. But again, we're on a bubble that's on the verge of breaking.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Caraviellolo. No, and I don't know exactly what I do. Maybe I'll date myself with this, but I was in the library the other day, going through microfilm records from the 80s of the Daily Mercury. And amazing to see some really significant projects that could have been done back then that died four, three in this room. So I agree with you, again, I'd say I'm saying we should be pushing ahead. Yeah, I'm glad to see that even prior to a comprehensive plan we have so much that is possible, and I think hopefully moving. And, you know, we've done some great work on zoning that's really enabled a lot of that so that that is, you know, an important piece of the conversation I hope that And I think that if implemented correctly, this comprehensive plan takes us from like having a few irons in the fire that, you know, kind of came from a lot of different places. Right. To getting it going and keeping, you know, and doing it in a coordinated way where people, you know, you know, residents, developers, property owners, everyone, all the stakeholders involved to have a clear understanding of what our process is and what the expectations are to, um, to build something. And as you know, as I said, we are the last,
[Richard Caraviello]: peace of the greater Boston area. Everything else is full, but Medford, Medford is the last stop. Malden's full, Somerville's full, Cambridge's full. We are it. Everett's full. So we say this is the last stop for people to build and grow. So again, the fire is going, we need to stoke that fire.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Caraviellolo. Two more sections and maybe we'll be less verbose on them. Um, on how's actually one, one kind of side note to Councilor Tseng's point earlier, um, I think, and again, please correct me if I've missed it or didn't piece it together. I definitely read the whole thing and I tried to put comments and everything, but you know, you working on it, you know, know how detailed the document it is. Um, around the community centers idea. Um, something that actually I've talked about with director hunt a little bit and, um, some other folks in the city is improving kind of having, I think community centers in the, in the different neighborhoods would be great. I think that's maybe a harder sell now, given the fact that we sold all of our properties that were in all the neighborhoods. Um, but that's a decision that we've already made. I'm talking about the old schools, if folks don't know what I'm talking about, but service provision, you know, we have a lot of service providers in the community who help, you know, low-income residents, residents who need access to services, who need access to government assistance, things like that. Was there any kind of conversation about, you know, maybe making a goal of improving and modernizing this building or building another structure or, working in partnership with a private nonprofit to have a kind of a service provision center, like a community assistance center where people could go and get help and advice when they need assistance from either nonprofits or government.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Like a one-stop shop.
[Zac Bears]: Kind of, yeah.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: No, I don't think we looked at that explicitly. That's an interesting idea. We did kind of incorporate the Resilience Hubs idea, which kind of looks more broadly at the social and climate resilience piece and thought of that as part of how to accomplish the network of partnership-based community hubs and maybe those could have those service provisions too. But we didn't think about the one-stop shop and reinforcing that. Although I think that's built a little bit into the open and engage piece about communicating better about how people access the resources so it could flow out of that.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I mean, yeah. And again, you know, we are where we are in the project. So I don't, you know, I'm sure we're, we have a lot of ideas that aren't going to make it under the work.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: No, no, it's an interesting idea.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. But you know, I think it might really align with the ideas around the lots surrounding this building and looking to develop that. I mean, I could see now this is a historic building and we need to, you know, there's a lot wonderful about this building. So just for anyone watching, I'm not talking about getting rid of city hall, but you know, is there a possibility that we could, work with a developer or, you know, do an RFI to say, hey, let's take all the public lots behind this building and think about what we could do as kind of a mixed-use center that renovates this building, which has some serious needs. You can hear how loud it gets in this room when the HVAC comes on, and you've probably seen the condition of the bathrooms. You know, something like that, like a one-stop shop, renovate City Hall, and do some mixed-use development around this area, which is already kind of included in the plan.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely the piece in the plan about kind of leveraging city-owned lots in around here, but not explicitly about rolling in facilities.
[Zac Bears]: So that's interesting. Yeah. Cool. Just throwing it out there as an idea.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. I wonder if I might, so that's the sort of the level of detail that we are talking about in the office is so we're, we're working to get ready to put these lots out to RFP, but it's, it's a process, right? We, there were, there were plans or a lot of plans. We want to make sure that the right things are in that. So that process is just starting, but some of we talk about is, do we stage them and do one at a time to break things in gentle? Or do we talk about doing everything at once because then maybe you get a developer who's willing to do more public space with one building and leverage the income that they would get from a more heavily commercial or residential or like, you know, type building. to then provide more public amenities in it and is are those public amenities that the city needs more offices our staff are starting to burst at the scene is it that we need a bus transit stop we need a place. where you can have covered bike racks and you can have bathrooms for bus drivers. So this can be the end of the line and a layover spot. Is it that, I don't know, I had a dream, what if we put the high school in Medford Square, but I guess that's sort of a dumb idea. But we like to spitball some of these, right? And see like which things actually make sense. And you gotta think about the crazy ideas to recognize what are actually the not so crazy ideas and how do we balance it. So we've just started to bring, we just brought a consultant on board to work with us on that. I apologize that I don't remember what level of announcement it's out. That's Victor is managing that in my office, but we did a walk around this week and met with the consultants to talk about how is this process gonna work and how are we gonna manage this? But that's like a very detailed level. And I think of the comprehensive plan is the level that says, we should make a move with these lots and we should do something and we should leverage them. And then the details on how do we leverage them. And that's the kind of thing that we then have to work out. And this one we're working on right now, we're not working on everything. We can't do everything at once. So.
[Zac Bears]: And maybe to that level of detail, throwing in improvements to the city hall and providing community service, additional community service, one-stop shop type opportunities might be at that.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, you know, I should just get these replaced with heat pumps, frankly. What I really need is a facilities manager who will do that so it's not literally me managing that project. I have managed heating upgrades in other municipal buildings. And I will say the Resilience Hub project that in some communities it really those are one-stop shop buildings and we've been having we've been working with the Mystic Valley YMCA as to whether they would be able to help fund the building where we could have all these different services in one place. We've started to think about whether some of the large developments that are coming to Medford could provide some space for a bunch of community benefits in them. So we're trying to figure some of that out. That is part of the idea, the idea of building a building just to be a community center is the kind of building we'll say, well, of course we should do that. But it turns out that we need to deal with the fire headquarters and the high school first, and that compared to those, the resilience hub one-stop shop building is a luxury. So I'm just sharing, sorry. I can't help it, I get into the weeds.
[Zac Bears]: No, and I mean, again, that's helpful. And it goes back to this idea of like scoping and prioritization and really a need that we have an urgent need to do that in a public way, I think. So almost done. Just one question, and it actually may not even be relevant, but just it was included at the presentation. I know it's from the housing production plan. How did we arrive at the 120 affordable units a year goal? And that may not be a question for you, Brie, but.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we did pull that directly from the housing production plan, which there's kind of a memo called Understanding Medford Today that preceded this work where we pulled together all the data from other plans. It's not in this document, so it's not too cumbersome, but that's a separate document. So more detail from the housing production plan gets pulled in there. I don't know the precise calculations for the 120 number, It is.
[Zac Bears]: It's okay.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it is within that plan.
[Zac Bears]: So is that document going to be a part I kind of like the final package, like something we could all Yes, it's sort of like a technical appendix piece, right?
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. And I think, you know, one thing to tie to lots of the comments, and what Alicia has been saying, too, is I think it is, you know, it's, it's very tempting to put all the solutions into the plan. but the plan also has to, is that 10 year, 30 year vision. So we want to leave some flexibility that those things could change. Like that one 20 number might be different now, you know, too. So we can put it in for today, but that one might change or the shifting market might mean that the, if we get too specific, you know, we, we lose traction with being able to remain accurate. So it's kind of that balance too.
[Zac Bears]: Yep. Heard loud and clear. Um, I think my last thing is around the implementation section. And I guess first a question is that kind of, it seemed to me to be kind of more of a list of like first steps to take. Is that a fair characterization?
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: I think that it's sort of probably a fair characterization in that the place that it's possible to get specific are more with the near-term steps. So yeah, you could identify it that way, although probably still be very busy in the near term if you did them all.
[Zac Bears]: I know there's a lot of steps to take, but- Might not get you all the way to the complete vision. Right. Is that, I guess just, and again, this kind of just goes to, basically my big three things that I think out of my comments on it are one, like be more focused on the fact that we have real serious budget needs and lack of budget to do things. The housing cost burden crisis is significant and growing. And I think just like being direct and honest about that and being direct and honest with the scope about that is really important. And then the third piece is, you know, these long-term solutions, medium to long-term solutions and steps is the idea that, I know it said in there, update the implementation section on an annual basis, is the idea that as we move through year by year, kind of those medium and long-term steps become clearer and then included in the implementation section?
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Yes. And then I think also that, as Alicia alluded, there's other plans that are implementing plans, like the climate action plan would be implementing, or the open space one, that are more precise about capital projects and kind of the near term. So those also kind of reinforce and roll up.
[Zac Bears]: Great, that is all I have for comments and questions. Any other comments or questions from fellow councilors? Any comments or questions by members of the public?
[Unidentified]: Please raise your hand on Zoom or come to the podium here in the chamber. I don't see any.
[Zac Bears]: Maybe we could talk a little bit about next steps. I know you went through them. I just wanna confirm for the public, you're taking comments on this draft through October 14th?
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[Zac Bears]: And where can people send those?
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: Those, if you go online to medfordcompplan.org, there is a survey there that people can fill out and you can also send it to the email, which is... I always say it wrong, so it's fair to.
[Amanda Centrella]: compplan at medford-ma.gov.
[Zac Bears]: I do really wish we'd gotten medfordno-ma.gov.
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: That's why someone else has to say it. I would encourage people to take the survey, too, if you want to participate, because it leaves open the door to kind of get feedback for the future about the implementing plans and these projects and stay involved.
[Zac Bears]: Great, and you said there are some copies at the library for people to review, that's helpful. Are those at the front desk or?
[Alicia Hunt]: I think you should ask at the front desk. If there's any trouble, just ask our office and we'll check in on those. I also think this is the right time to make a plug that our office does put out a newsletter every three to four weeks and that I encourage people to sign up for it because when we're having public meetings and we're doing surveys and we have announcements about different kinds of programs and events going on, we put those out through our newsletter. So it is very informative. So that's on our city's webpage for the planning, development and sustainability office. It is a great way to stay updated on everything that we have going on.
[Zac Bears]: Great, thank you. And actually maybe these questions could go to you just to confirm, take comments to the 14th and then consulting team is gonna meet with city staff to work on kind of a final draft.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. And so we've actually been, maybe this is helpful to know, one of our graduate students has been going through, well, she and I have gone through the plan in detail and identified where there are specific boards, commissions, or staff members who should review specific portions of the plan. And we have been sending them saying, can you please look at these specific sections and these specific items? and if somebody is being listed as a city steward on one of the actions, they have received an email that says, you're being listed as this, can you confirm that this works for you? So that there's buy-in from everybody who is being asked of those. We've also taken comments from staff, particularly, we had a Google, like a version online that the staff were able to put comments in, I don't know, there were hundreds and hundreds of comments, was that new? 600? 561 comments from staff have gone or they basically they're going all at once now to the consultants they've started to flip through them anything that was super big like concerning those went early, but these are all the details and then one of the things we'll be doing in the next. next few weeks, but after the 14th, is sitting with the consultants. A lot of the comments, it's very easy to just incorporate, right? You know, when our transportation planner says, say it this way instead of that way, you just do it. Where there are comments that might be in conflict with each other or might be in conflict with what they feel like they've heard from the community over the course of the plan, that's, we're going to sit down and have a workshop and go through those. and try and work out, like, what do we do with these ones that are not obvious what we should do with? So we'll be doing that and that will result in, and then I have to ask you guys, what is the time? I know you told me and I wrote it down in my notes somewhere, but what's our timeline for after that?
[oefytL6ycdo_SPEAKER_03]: I think after that, we're planning on, yes, thank you. After that, we're planning on, I think, about four weeks, up to four weeks of kind of making the final revisions and then putting them back forth.
[Zac Bears]: And after that, going straight to see CDB, December, January.
[Alicia Hunt]: So it'll go to the planning board for final approval. And then actually, I believe we submit these with the state because there's it's, this is being done under a state law that cities should have comprehensive plans. meeting. Um so, yeah, I've I think that we're leaving that kind of loose. Our planning board meets what I would say is as often as necessary. Right now, we're meeting every 2 weeks which is not a pleasure but rather to to minimize to not have 5 hour meetings. Um sometimes we might go 6 weeks without a meeting because there are no filings. Um but actually, there's just depends and we'll meet when we need to to to hear this one.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Okay. Got it. Um last question. Um in terms of the iterative updates to the plan and the and the implementation plan is the thought to have kind of a public process around that or would that be more internal to city staff? You know, when we have a meeting like this every year, when we talk about the updates to the plan,
[Alicia Hunt]: Well, since we've never done this before. Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said for what do people want, like if the council wants to meet about it regularly, that can be done. Um, I also wouldn't want to waste people's time, so we don't need to do that. I think there's some vision that there would be something online that where you could put updates about where do things stand, where have these actions, are these actions complete? Are there new actions that we're adding to the list? There should be some way to track it. One of the recommendations is that there's an implementation committee. And so some of that is how many, like, does, do many members from the current committee want to move on to that? Do we actually have different people who are interested in an implementation committee? Because it's around specific areas of expertise. Some of that we're starting to just sort of work through. Some of it depends on what is in the implementation plan affects who wants to be on a committee, how that committee runs, how often does it meet. I think there are some best practices with committees meeting monthly to look at what's going on, where the thing stands. Reality is there is so much in here. And if you were to see my office's monthly report, It's like 12 pages every month as it is. So getting this kind of information out there, it's a lot. There's a lot of material. We're working on it.
[Zac Bears]: Great, yeah, thank you so much and I appreciate that. I'll go to Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Mr. President. I think probably the next key step is the city needs to sit with the stakeholders in this project, because we can all sit around there and we can all have these great ideas, but if the stakeholders aren't buying into it, then the comprehensive plan goes nowhere. So I think that's really the real key to the plan is the city, whether your office or the mayor's office sits down with all the stakeholders, whether in a section at a time, but they're the key to this whole thing because if they're not buying into the plan, there is no plan. Am I correct in saying that?
[Alicia Hunt]: And it's true. And I think that you're aware that we meet with property owners all the time. And we really appreciate that you refer them to us because sometimes it's finding out who is the actual owner. A lot of these, if you look in the assessor's records have sort of mysterious names associated with them. So finding the person who's behind that is not, not necessarily a matter of simple public record, but we appreciate that. And then encouraging them to meet with us. Occasionally we reach out to property owners who don't respond. So we welcome any assistance in getting them to talk to us about it.
[Richard Caraviello]: But they're the player in the game. Without them, we have no plan. Because the city doesn't have money to buy anyone's property. But engaging with them, I think, is really the next big part of the plan to see if they're buying into our plan.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Caraviello. Thank you, Brie. Thank you, Director Hunt. We will forward you the committee report for October 14th. Great. And so you can hear what he thought I said.
[Alicia Hunt]: Amanda's also been taking detailed notes for us as well on what the... No, I know, I'm just messing with you. Amanda's been trying to capture the concerns.
[Zac Bears]: Great. How many? Six. Six single space pages. Great. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Thank you, Amanda. Is there a motion on the floor? Motion to keep the paper in committee and adjourned by Councilor Caraviello. Seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Tseng. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Five in the affirmative to the negative. The motion passes and the meeting is adjourned.
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