[Alicia Hunt]: All right, I think we're probably ready to get started. Thank you all for coming this evening. I'm Alicia Hunt. I'm the Director of Planning, Development and Sustainability. There are a couple of staff with me here this evening. Amanda Centrella is staff to this Community Development Board. Victor Schrader is our Economic Development Director. Allison McIntyre is one of our graduate student interns and we have with us this evening, Jonathan Silverstein, who is outside special legal counsel to the city. So why are we here? So I live in Medford and people ask me all the time, Alicia, how can I get involved? How can I make change? When can I say something that will make a difference? When's the best time to say something to make change in the city. And I realized that you shouldn't have to know me and be able to ask me questions or other staff in the city to get the answers to these things. People should be able to find out on their own how the city government works. So this is the start. And as you saw, we're recording this evening. And our goal this evening will be putting this up on the web to share with people. And through the comprehensive planning process, we realized that people wanna know, how does my government work? When is the right time to say something? Who should I say it to? And so we said, let's start right now, we're gonna start with zoning because zoning is happening this week. This week, we have a hearing on the zoning recalification later this week. So what is the zoning process? How do you change zoning? So tonight is about process. And with that, actually, we are going to start with a video. And I'm going to play the video. We're very excited about this video. And then after that, we will take questions and answer questions and have a discussion. And the video is two minutes and 47 seconds long. So I hope it will keep your attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: Changing zoning in Medford is an important but common process. We want to explain the journey that a zoning amendment has to go through before it actually changes Medford's zoning rules. Those rules are known as the zoning ordinance. First, why would someone propose a zoning amendment? Zoning changes can update old rules that are out of date, introduce new rules, and take advantage of new opportunities based on city needs and priorities. Certain groups can submit a proposal to change the zoning. These include the Mayor's Office, the City Council, the Community Development Board, and of course, groups of residents or property owners. The proposed change has to be in proper form. In other words, it must meet certain specific requirements for language and form. Once an amendment has been submitted, it must pass through a series of steps before it comes to the City Council for a final vote. These steps allow for different members of city government and the public to contribute to the amendment through comments and the public hearing process. Comments from people involved in this process, including you, really do impact the content of an amendment. While important rules about the timing and procedure guide the process and help set the course for gathering robust feedback from our community, Once a proposal has gone through every phase of approval, it must be voted on by the city council, whose members are publicly elected, where it can either fail, be reheard, or become part of the city's zoning ordinance. A zoning amendment that passes is effectively adopted on the same day of the vote, which means it now applies to any new building applications for certain changes to land, buildings, signs, etc. That's the public process. But what kinds of proposals might go through this process? For example, one proposed change might be a new mixed-use zoning district, or the addition of rules about including beneficial trees in new developments. So that's how the Medford community does zoning. Proposal, review, input and modifications, and adoption. For more info, visit www.medfordma.org.
[Unidentified]: Alright, great.
[Alicia Hunt]: So that was our start. Um, there's not a huge group here. People can raise their hand. I can Anticipate questions or we can I can unmute people people for
[Unidentified]: Will, would you like to start us off?
[William Navarre]: Yeah, sure. I just wanted to ask if the mayor has a veto on voting changes, because I know in the city charter, it says that every order, ordinance, and resolution in vote relative to the affairs of the city shall be presented to the mayor for his, it says, approval. And so I'm wondering if that applies to zoning, because it wasn't on that little chart.
[Alicia Hunt]: That is a great question, Will. You know what, Jonathan, can I just ask you to answer that?
[Unidentified]: Sure, yes.
[Silverstein]: Right, right. Yes, this is an ordinance, and it would require the mayor's approval. I would note, however, that since zoning requires a two-thirds vote, to pass, with certain very limited exceptions, that there's already a supermajority vote of the council at the time that the ordinance is presented to the mayor.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, so a supermajority could overrule her veto?
[Silverstein]: I will double check your charter. Generally speaking, most charters allow for a veto to be overridden by your supermajority. I'll look while other questions come in.
[Alicia Hunt]: And we have a few questions in the chat. Steve, you did ask, you'd say it would be great to have an explanation of zoning. Do you mean right now or in the video or a video that explains zoning? I guess what I'm wondering is, is that something we should attempt to explain. Actually, Amanda, you have a great, very brief one sentence summary in what you sent out, and that was in the press release that went out. Are you able to grab that? Let me grab it in a second. And in the meantime, There was a question after public comment that might lead to changes. If there are changes, does that mean another public comments opportunity or is it just one round of public comment? That's a great question. And I would tell you that it depends. Everything always depends, right? If the public comment leads to changes that are minor recommendations from the board. So what we did is we advertised this document, the zoning document, and anytime there is a zoning amendment, the public hearing is advertised. It must be advertised in the newspaper for two weeks before The public hearing, but we also put out a press release. We put the word out as well as just the legal notice that the zoning change was occurring. In that, we have to explain what is encompassed in this. And so if we were to take a simpler zoning change, a great example is that the city Inclusionary housing is in zoning. The city voted to change zoning a bunch of years ago by adding inclusionary housing as an idea to our zoning code. When we did that, we advertised we would be discussing inclusionary housing. There were recommendations from the planning board that made changes but they were within the scope of what was advertised. Therefore, that went back to the city council they could accept or deny those changes, and they could vote for or against it. If what had come back from the CD board was so out of line with what had been advertised that it would have been considered a new document, a new idea, a new thing, then it would have to be re-advertised. So, for example, we've advertised what sections are being changed in this amendment that's coming up later in the week, and so those sections are all on the table. Does that sort of help answer the question about whether or not, I would say that it may have to be re-advertised if the changes are dramatic, but if they are within sort of the reasonable expectation of what could have come up, then it doesn't have to be. Amanda, do you have that? description of zoning?
[Amanda Centrella]: Yes, and this is not very detailed, but just to give you kind of a flavor for what zoning does. It's a tool that grants municipalities the authority to regulate the use of land, buildings and structures. And so it's a way that the city can, you know, plan for and shape the community while protecting health, safety and the welfare of its constituents.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. Frequently, there's a sentence in the beginning of zoning about promoting the health, safety, convenience, and general welfare of its inhabitants, and then to lessen the danger from fire, congestion, confusion. Those are the general scopes. Zoning is big and can do a lot in a municipality. Oh, yeah. So there was, oh, thank you, Amanda. So we did post, we did show a video at the very beginning about zoning. We've had a number of people join afterwards. The zone, this video is now available on YouTube. As of right this moment, it's not searchable. I intend to make it searchable in the morning. We are just on straightening out some issues with captions. There are captions available on it right now in English, but I have a document for Spanish captions. I just haven't managed to upload that yet or frankly figure out how to upload it. Also, perhaps helpful this evening, we have turned on live transcript for this meeting. So if you would like closed captions for this meeting this evening, there's a CC button on the bottom of your control bar, and you can click on that, and you can get captions for this meeting. The ones that are with the video actually were made by our consultants, so they're not They're better than Google Translate. How's that? And then there's some more questions in here. I also should point out that you can raise your hand by clicking on reactions and raising your hand if you have questions.
[Silverstein]: Alicia?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah.
[Silverstein]: Just briefly to answer the previous question, there is a provision in the charter for an override of the mayor's veto, and it is by the same two-thirds vote that the zoning needs to pass in the first instance.
[Unidentified]: Right.
[Alicia Hunt]: So there are some new changes in the state zoning that under certain situations, you only need a simple majority to pass the zoning. The zoning, but they are very limited situations. And that's what is the two thirds of the seven and yet it is five. So in Medford, we have seven city Councilors or are a simple majority and five are considered a super majority. That's what would be needed to pass the zoning. I don't mind unmuting people or allowing people to unmute. I think that's easier if people have more questions about the process. If it would be helpful to sort of see the video again, I can do that. So this was asked, is this scheduled to go to the current council or the newly elected council? So the process as it's going on now, and what we are not, ready to do this evening or not doing is getting into the content, but for the process of what's going on. So in the big picture process, this Medford zoning hasn't had a major overhaul since the 1960s. We've had some minor changes to it. And state law changes over time, and that actually impacts our zoning. And the city council decided over the past few years that they wanted to do what's called a recodification, which is where they kind of clean up the zoning. They make sure that everything that's in our zoning is in alignment with state law, that everything says what it's supposed to be saying, that it's organized in an intelligent way. In fact, Our zoning was on paper for a long time and was put online and you know there are some places where some headers got mixed up and messed up. So this process was to review Medford zoning and to reorganize it to make it in line with state law. during that process, there are also a few things that were recommended by the city councils outside. They also have outside counsel and their legal counsel made some recommendations about things they should include in the zoning. So they have been meeting, they've actually been having meetings since about this time last year about this zoning recodification meeting regularly in committees of the whole about the zoning. At the point where they felt they were done with it, they voted it out of committee of the hall and voted it to their own, reviewed it in their own body. At that time, the very next step, they're required to then send it to Medford's planning board, which in Medford is the community development board, for their input and feedback and the community development board is required by law to hold a public hearing. So Thursday night is the public hearing on that process. The city council met on this document for a year. I would be very surprised if our planning board opened the hearing, had all the material presented to them, had their own comments, and heard from the public and closed the hearing in the same night. So we are anticipating that there will be at least one more meeting on this. There could be 10, but there could be one more meeting on it. So there's not a schedule yet for it to go back to the City Council. I would be surprised if it was referred back to the City Council before January. COB, Erika Vandenbrande): i'm expecting this Community development board to take two or three meetings to review all the content of this document before it goes back to them. COB, Erika Vandenbrande): So that's my very long way of saying I expected it will actually go back in front of the Council in January, at which point the new city Councilors will be seated. So the other question is that they haven't seen the announcements about the current proposal, where is that available and is there a readable summary somewhere? Amanda, can you just answer that question?
[Amanda Centrella]: Sorry, Alicia, I was distracted by something.
[Alicia Hunt]: It's basically, she's there looking, where is the summary and stuff? You put out a lovely press release, and it's linked to our website. So right now, the public hearing on the news proposed zoning is the top item on the city's main web page. It's the top news items. I'm just going to throw that in the chat. And in that news item, which is also available on the patch. And we've posted this on Facebook. There is a summary of amendments and the summary of amendments. was provided to us by the city's, the city council's legal counsel. So what's available, I would go to this press announcement because it lists the summary of the amendments, the table of contents for the proposed ordinance, the draft proposed ordinance, the full draft, the use table, and the dimensional table. Should I explain those terms, the use table and the dimensional table? Yes, people should interrupt me if you have actual specific questions. So, in the city in zoning. There are zones. Wow, we're gonna get into this, what is zoning? You know what, I think that actually I should call up our zoning map. And I will tell you that there are no proposed changes to the zoning map in what is in front of the city council right now. But the way I process things, I process things best through, I'm very visual. And so I'm gonna call up the map on my screen and that is going to help a little bit.
[Unidentified]: I'm going to share this.
[Alicia Hunt]: And I am actually going to start by sharing, this is Medford's zoning map. And it's hard to read. Absolutely. It was originally in 1965. In fact, you can see that here. And you can see that there are some zoning There were some revisions, 83, 90, 92, 93. I'm going to ask the other staff to make sure you're letting people in from the waiting room. And this map has on it districts O, C1, I, ROS, MUZ, SF2. So each of those is a zoning district. and the zoning district determines what can be done in that district. And while we didn't want to get into the content of what is specifically here, a use table tells you what is allowed in each district. So without us truly discussing the content of this, and actually Jonathan, do you have any suggestion whether I should show the old version of the youth table only or the new one? I just, I really don't want to get into taking any feedback on this this evening, but rather an explanation of what everything is.
[Silverstein]: Sure. I mean, obviously you could use either simply as a method of illustrating the way that use tables delineate what uses are allowed in different districts. The proposed new table, I think you could use because it's out there and just be clear to everyone that let's not get into discussing whether or not we think any particular use is a good idea in that particular district, but just to help illustrate the point.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. And actually, I prefer to show you the new version simply because the old one is, you know, when you take something that was on paper and you put it online, but you put it online in 1990 and then it looks weird and it's hard to process what you're seeing, that happens a lot with the old version. So a use table. I probably should have thought of getting somebody else's use table to avoid it. So this is an example of a use table. So across the top, these are all the different zones that have been described in the city. And then these are different uses. So this particular one is looking at residential uses, and it's telling you what is a Yes, yes, it's allowed. No, it's not allowed. Or a notation like CC means special permit by the city council. And if I just flip a little, I'll show you that for, if you're going to review the materials for Thursday night, anything that is highlighted in yellow is a change. So I just flipped to a page here that has a change on it. So that one can see what so here oh here green. This is new for this. One, these are things that were added in this recodification that are changes. Everything else that you're seeing on here, for example, Medford has had a category of use called paranormal service and sales, and it is not allowed in residential open space, single family one, single family two, et cetera, it is allowed by special council of the city, special permit of the city council in commercial one and commercial two and not anywhere else. So that's sort of an example of what is in our zoning. And then I am not, PC is parking and oh my gosh, sorry, my brain just stopped on what LG was. loading, right, I think. If Vic or Amanda knows, you're welcome to jump in. So this is an example of what a use table looks like. All the different kinds of uses, the zones, what's allowed. So some are allowed by City Council special permit. There are others here. BA is special permit by the Board of Appeals. And there are a few, I believe, that are special permit by the CD board. That's another one that could show up in here. So that's the use table. The other thing that I want to show is the dimensional table. So this is something else that's sort of pretty important in zoning. And this tells you what things so we have things so each lot has an area has how big it is it has front sides and a depth and so the table gives you so for example a detached single family dwelling in a single family one zone has A lot area per dwelling unit is NA because it's just one dwelling unit. In a single family, one zone has a minimum square footage for the lot of 7,000 square feet. The front, that means your curb or your side facing the main road, the front of the house must be at least 35 feet long. The width of the lot must be 50 feet long. The depth must be 55 feet deep. There's no requirements for landscape usable open space. Those are pretty complicated ideas too. And then this is setbacks from the yards. So your front setback must be 15 feet from the front curb, seven and a half feet from each side yard. and 15 feet from your rear lot line, and your maximum permitted lot coverage is 40%. The maximum height of the building, the single family house, must be 35 feet, and we're only allowed to have two and a half stories. So without getting, this is here on the web, and you're all welcome to review it. On the meeting for this hearing that's coming up with the recodification, almost nothing on this table or any of this is being changed or is being discussed as being changed. A lot of us are aware that there are a lot of things that are out of date with Medford zoning and that it may or may not meet what people are looking for in Medford of today. This process is cleaning up the zoning. The intention is that we are also doing a comprehensive plan and the comprehensive plan is looking at everything in the city of Medford. Economic development, housing, residential, transportation, climate change, environment, everything. And we've been doing a lot of public outreach about that. The consultants have been reviewing a lot of documents and that'll be continuing to happen over the winter and spring. And it is the expectation. I think I could go so far as to say of all the staff and all of the city councilors that the comprehensive plan out of that process will recommend changes to our zoning. and they will make recommendations. They'll say you should allow paranormal businesses in any district in the city of Medford for, to take a crazy example, right? But those recommendations will come out of the comprehensive plan. And then next summer is when we'll start to say, what changes do we want to see to our zoning that really reflects who we are as a city? The hearing tomorrow, Thursday evening, is simply about the changes that have been put forth and that are in the summary of amendments document. So I recommend going to that to see what it is that is going to be discussed on Thursday evening. There are a lot of things that we should change. or I hate to say that we should change. It's not about my values and my opinion. It's that we've been hearing from the community that our zoning doesn't meet the needs of Medford residents. So what we are planning to do is take input for the comprehensive plan and take ideas there that are outside the scope of what the city council is looking to hear. is working on right now. So I'm going to stop sharing my screen and admit that I've been talking a very long time and I have not been reading the chat. Hopefully some of the staff have been. And let's catch up and see if anybody else, other people have questions. If you find a typo, you're welcome to email them to us. We'll pass them on to the legal counsel. Jess has her hand up. Jess, you want to ask a question? I'm just starting to read through the chat. So why don't we take some of your questions?
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, sure. It's kind of more of an observation. I don't know if you would want to comment on it. But I just because I haven't engaged much in this. So I thought it was really interesting that that table is just it kind of shows what over time since, as you said, like, the current process with the city council, they haven't like really gone back and changed those definitions or really changed much about what's in that table, that it's an interesting view of what Medford has tried to regulate over time in relation to how people can kind of move about the city and use the city, you know? So I thought that was just really interesting that it sort of shows you from the 1950s to today, like what specific, so when we were talking about In the chat, we were talking about the paranormal thing. It's just interesting what comes up in cities and what city councils kind of regulate at certain moments in time. And I found this document interesting on that level, which is not really the point of this meeting at all.
[Alicia Hunt]: So thanks though. You sound like you're a zoning wonk at heart. If anybody knows anybody who does this professionally, we actually have an opening in our office for a land use planner. So that would be the person who is the staff expert on this stuff and staffs the community development board. Amanda has been doing that role, but would love to have somebody else take that position and let her get back to the kind of work she prefers to be doing in our office. The mild plug there, Erica.
[Unidentified]: I mine's a bit of a non sequitur as well. I was just wondering if somebody could give an overview of the zoning related topics as they are outlined in the comprehensive plan or rather the overlap and synergies between the comprehensive plan and the proposed zoning amendments.
[Alicia Hunt]: So I would tell you that there are not. And that's a very simple statement, but in essentially we started comprehensive planning process what we started a year ago hiring consultants and working out contracts, but they started in May. And they started by reading past plans reading past recommendations we've given them more than 30 documents that were plans and proposals in the city of Medford. meeting with people, interviewing people, focus groups, coming up with what do people want? What do they want to see? What would they like to see in Medford? And they're not ready to make recommendations on what should we change yet. This recodification is really focused on there were things in Medford's zoning that was no longer in line with current law. An easy example that pops into my head, risk of, I can't I can't go into detail I don't know enough detail. Oh, let's use our favorite one the Dover amendment. So, there are certain law, there's certain rules in. Massachusetts zoning code about the ability to regulate churches and schools, particularly universities, and that's called the Dover Amendment. That was actually passed since our zoning was written. Fun fact, it's based on a case about the Tufts University versus the city of Medford. So that's kind of a fun fact. But Medford zoning was never actually updated to take that into account and to have a thing that says here's what is and isn't allowed. We should have. I can't speak to why people haven't bothered. I can tell you that we don't violate it because the school in question and the board in question, they're here. But so we needed to reflect that in our zoning. That's one example. Another one is that there's something about how you regulate political signs and what we had was no longer in line with what was allowed in the state of Massachusetts. So those are the kinds of things that have been edited. And then there were a few things that our zoning, the zoning consultant to the City Council made recommendations to them that they should add or change. And in many cases, they took those changes and additions and incorporated them in as well. But our comprehensive plan consultants have not weighed in on this. I would say that none of these changes prohibit any of the changes that might come in the future.
[Unidentified]: Does that help? Thank you. Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: And there has been some question about chicken and eggs. Shouldn't we have waited for the comprehensive plan before doing any of this? And there is a school of thought that says, well, actually, our zoning was really complicated and hard to read and numbered weirdly. And frankly, that use table, if you saw the old version of the use table or the dimensional table, you'd be like, I don't know how to read it. And so it is cleaning it up and making it easier. There are a lot of typos in our current zoning online. And so this pass through has really made it easier for people to read the document, which in theory would make it easier for us to process changes in the future as real changes and not just cleaning up the mess. Because over time, anything, you know, Yeah, I did it a lot. It gets messy. One thing we didn't go through to change at all this time is use of pronouns. It is entertaining to read it with use of pronouns in mind, because the use of she versus he usually reflects who was the director at the time that it was made throughout all of Medford's ordinances. It is entertaining to realize that the person who held the office at the time the ordinance was written, that's which gender they used in the language. Perhaps not how we should be going forward, but it's fascinating to read.
[Unidentified]: Other questions? Did you have more, Erica, or is your hand just still up?
[Alicia Hunt]: There are more comments in the chat, but again, I've been talking too much to read them. Somebody asked about the other letters in the use table and Victor got those out for us. PC is parking code and LC is loading code for loading docs. So there's also a definitions section in the new zoning ordinance. Definitions, there were some in the beginning of the old ordinance, but they were not, not everything was defined that needed to be defined. So that will help as well. I definitely recommend that if people think that they see changes, things that are going on in this current version that you'd like to make change, the public hearing, this is the time to do it. The plan for the public hearing on Thursday is that the City Council zoning lawyer is going to present each section. So he'll present the first section, then we'll open it up for the board to ask questions, and then we'll open it up for the public to ask questions and make comments, and then we'll move on to the second section. So we'll go like that through the entire document. And the meeting is scheduled to start at 6 o'clock on Thursday night. How far we get is completely dependent on how many comments and questions there are. And I do agree that putting energies into the comprehensive plan makes a lot of sense. If there are things that are not being looked at, not being changed by the city council's amendments, then we're going to recommend that those go back into the big feeding of the comprehensive plan. And if there are changes that you'd like to see to our zoning and you don't know when or how to say it right, like, My favorite right now, if I could be so bold, is to something that we have an apartment two district in an area that is got a lot of first floor business that's going on, a lot of cafes and restaurants, and it's great. Only they're not allowed. Apartment two is residential only. So I would hope that some change would occur to allow mixed use as of right in that area, because it seems to be very popular and working. So that's the kind of suggestion that you can put on our comprehensive plan map, or you can send it in email. We, if you're reading through our zoning or you're seeing stuff and you just, you're like, I want this to come out of the recommendations of the comprehensive plan consultant, the email, and I'm gonna make sure I get this right, it's comp plan. Now I just blanked. Amanda, are you?
[Amanda Centrella]: Yes, it is compplanatmedford-ma.gov and I'll put it in the chat.
[Alicia Hunt]: Great. So that is a great place to send us thoughts, changes, suggestions, things you'd like to see. We are taking all of those and giving them to the consultants to fold in to the public meetings they're doing and to the various ways that they're getting input on the comprehensive plan.
[Unidentified]: Have I, have we answered enough questions on the zoning? More questions? Should I show the video again? Oh, there's a hand, Leah?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't, this is like, you know, kind of a question, but I'm a total zoning newbie. And I know you guys have kind of limited resources, but for me, the thing that would best help me understand like how the zoning is, is if there was like a map, like you showed, but it had the picture of like a building that would be allowed and a building that would not be allowed in each area. like on GIS or something? Is that even remotely possible?
[Alicia Hunt]: Well with a different zoning code it would be because what you are describing is what is known in the trade as code-based zoning where a form-based. Thank you, Amanda. Amanda's more recently out of planning school than I am. Form-based zoning is where you say this is what we want to see. Here are examples of what we would like to see in this neighborhood. And it doesn't talk about setbacks and stuff the same way. It talks about this is the end result. I'm pretty sure that that's what Somerville zoning looks like right now. It is incredibly different from the way Medford is. I will tell you that they did that in-house and it took them seven years to convert their zoning to look from the way Medford's does today to the way theirs does now. The only thing that I feel that I can share that makes it easier to understand our zoning is instead of showing you that old, that is the official map. We also have what we call the illustrative map. Both of these are available from our offices web page that you could download and view. And let me just share, it's a little bit big. It always takes a minute to load on my screen. The illustrative one is not the legal zoning map. So it's possible that some of the details in it are not 100% correct. No, it doesn't want to load for me.
[Unidentified]: Here I go.
[Alicia Hunt]: Why don't I let Jess ask her question and then I'm just going to pop up the illustrative map.
[Jenny Graham]: Um, yeah, I guess. So the reason that all of these buildings exist, even though they're outside of like the zoning law is because they get, they go in front of the zoning board and then they get, they get them to allow the building to happen, even though it goes against our current zoning law right. So, um, I'm wondering if any, if there was any study done or any sense of like how much resources we'll save by having just like an updated code where not every single, almost like every single thing has to come by the zoning board. Like, is that one of the goals of this process as well is to have like an updated code that doesn't, that exactly puts some of those things into compliance so that they wouldn't have had to go through the board at all.
[Alicia Hunt]: So I would say that it's less about looking at the resources and what that would take. And it's more about saying, well, this is what we have in Medford. Do we like what we have? Do we want more of this? And should we change our zoning to allow this as of right? We have what we have in Medford that's not in compliance with zoning for a lot of reasons. Some of it actually probably predates the zoning. So if our zoning is from 1965, a lot of our restaurants, a lot of those things, I was thinking about Salem Street, Salem Street, like around Park Ave and all, a bunch of those businesses have probably been there since before the 60s. They probably predated the zoning. So that's, The, the term that's used for that is grandfathered in. So that's I mean that's the technical term that they were allowed and wait so there's a term. I'm non conforming uses. So they are the non conforming uses, and they existed before the zoning was written, then the zoning was written and set up we don't want it like that. You can go to the zoning board of appeals and ask for a use variance to allow a use that is not allowed in a particular district. Sometimes the zoning board looks at that and says, this makes complete sense. Of course, we should give you a use variance. Medford went through a period of time where it was felt that that was not legal, that our zoning did not allow use variances. There was a legal case in the past year to 18 months where the court ruled that actually Medford zoning allows use variances. And actually, that is one of the things that is being clarified in this recodification. is that Medford zoning allows use variances, but there's also the variances for setbacks and heights. So those are other things. So it's not always because We were given variances. You're right, it does seem like there are a lot of variances being given. You'd actually be amazed by the number of building permits that we're signing off on all the time in the city of Medford that actually don't end up going to the zoning board. There are a lot more done as of right. And even if the very large buildings were allowed as of right and didn't have to get zoning variances, I'm always afraid of stating specific facts off the top of my head and missing the numbers, but buildings over a certain size are required to have site plan review by the community development board. So even if say they want, so say somebody wanted to build a new, five-story life sciences building, and it was allowed as of right by the height of the building and the setbacks and everything, it would be big enough that they would still have to go in front of the community development board and get guidance and approval on the details, but they would know that the community development board couldn't say, no, you can't build that building here. They would say, we'd like some different colors, and we'd like to change your front entry, and how are the residents approaching it, and what is the parking, and what is the treatment over here, and where do the trees that you have, right? So all those sort of soft things. And frankly, a developer is willing to negotiate on those soft things to make it something that fitting wants, especially if they know that in the end, they're allowed to build their building. So let me, I'm just going to pop up this. I also recommend this version of the zoning map. Like I said, it's not the legal version, but it really does help people see what the different sections are. There you go. You can see sort of where the different zones are. I am very familiar with maps in Medford. So right now we're here in City Hall. We're in a commercial one district. This is the Rotary right here by City Hall. And then this is apartment one. This is Salem Street. So let's see, the police station, the Roberts School, this is the Roberts School along here. These are all first floor commercial. There are gas stations all along here. None of that's allowed in Apartment 1. I would be stunned if anybody in Medford said, we don't think there should be commercial along Salem Street, right? People are not saying that. They're saying, this is good. We like to be able to walk to shops. So that's one of the things that we're hoping will come out of the comprehensive plan. So this map is also available from the website. So we are getting close to 7 o'clock. I do want to see if there are any other questions before we have to wrap things up.
[Unidentified]: Good questions. Well, thank you all actually.
[Amanda Centrella]: Oh, I'm sorry, Alicia. So I had put in the chat, and this actually may not be the exact tool that folks were looking for, but someone had asked if there's a tool that you can search an address and then it, you know, shows up with the zoning for that area. And I had put muni mapper, but I actually think I'm not sure if there's a zoning layer for muni mapper. I was trying to play around with it a little bit while we were chatting. Is there like an access GIS type tool that is is available to the public?
[Alicia Hunt]: We are working on getting some stuff like that available to the public. I am not sure. if it is available now. This layers, style layers. So you can see parcels on this and you can see buildings, you can see wetlands. I used to use this a lot for wetlands. Let's zoom in a little further. Right, so the pink are all parcels. One more time. And then you can click to ID something. For example, Medford City Hall is what I just clicked on. You can look at the features. You can look at any parcel in the city of Medford.
[Unidentified]: This is publicly available.
[Alicia Hunt]: And if the other staff think that I'm wrong and there's something available to the public that we can point them to, please say so. I know we're piloting some stuff in the office, which is why I'm not 100% sure what's public yet.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think you're wrong, Alicia, but I don't know if mass land records that might have something in one facet or another, depending on what search filters you use. And your local librarian would probably have some good answers for you too.
[Alicia Hunt]: So MassGIS is not coming back with us quickly with information, which is somehow not surprising. Oh, interesting. I just picked a different parcel. It may just be that map number, the sourcers. You can find out who owns any parcel. But I don't think zoning information. Use code. So there are codes in here. It's not the same.
[Amanda Centrella]: This is not a solution to this, but a Band-Aid for anyone who is interested in learning about the zoning of a particular address or area, you can reach out to our office. And that's a capability that several staff have. So for folks that are curious or that are trying to get an understanding of you know, the land, a piece of land, they can reach out to our office or I also believe the building department would have plenty of folks there that can address that. But recognizing that that's not a solution to having something, you know, that's widely usable and accessible.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: All right, well, thank you all for coming. If there are other questions, we're happy to. Please share the video, and then we will have that out there for people.
[Unidentified]: We're happy to answer questions. Thank you everybody for coming.
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