[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_05]: Check one two microphone check one two.
[SPEAKER_06]: can't do it's laundry. Yeah. Yeah. Sure, I do.
[SPEAKER_04]: Anna's here.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, is she here? Yep.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sorry. Councilor is saying that was present as a non-voting member last time.
[SPEAKER_06]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'll kick us off and then I'll throw it to you for if there's anything you want to add. Just let me know whenever you're ready. Okay. There will be a meeting of the Medford City Council Planning and Purbanning Committee, Wednesday, July 24th, is that right? 5.30 p.m. The purpose of this meeting is to go for paper 24-033, which is comprehensive zoning updates in collaboration with the city council's Zoning consultant. The format of this committee meeting is going to be a little bit different than usual. We have arranged to have a zoning mapping workshop prepared by Innis Associates. So for the first give or take 90 minutes, councillors, committee members, City staff, members of the public are going to be circulating, looking at the zoning maps which were presented by Innes Associates at a couple previous committee meetings, asking questions, making notes on sticky notes for further review and discussion. All of this will inform our future work on tweaks to the zoning map, housing strategies and other strategies. Then around 7 p.m. I'm going to reconvene us to our typical format, where we'll have a discussion about the main threads to come out of this discussion, questions we'd like to pose to experts, to department heads, to the public, based on what came out of the mapping workshop discussion and the questions on the sticky notes. And we'll go until about 8 p.m. reviewing that discussion and talking about our next steps, particularly along zoning changes along some of our corridors and housing strategies both corridor level and globally. I'd like to pass it off to Director Hunt if you have anything else to add or Paola.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good evening. Thank you. We do have A lot of maps here in plenty of space. If there are people who are actually watching on the zoom and want to come down to City Hall to see them, we will make them available online afterwards for people to view. But at this time, we're going to encourage, I'll pass it to Paula, but we're going to encourage staff and councillors to, and members of the public, write on the maps. And we have stickies to actually leave information behind and thoughts and questions, et cetera. Some things we may specifically say we want to push to, it is our intention to do a public workshop that would be advertised as a public workshop in the future on certain issues that make sense. And some of this may be saying, you know, if there are things over, we have maps on two of the corridors that might say actually that should go to public workshop versus things that like, oh, great, this clearly is obvious when you look at it. Paula, did you want to add anything?
[SPEAKER_02]: know only that we have two sets of maps on this area, we have all the Medford area, the whole area studies on different themes. And then, on the other side of the room, those are the corridors Salem Street and Mystic Avenue, as well with thematic, mainly on nonconformities. There are two color sticky notes. We have the blue maybe for more general comments and the green if there are some specific questions that the city councilors wants to do to the public that we can on the next round place those questions to the public. That will be great. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Great. Thank you so much for that introduction, both. Thank you for preparing this. So just to underline that last point, blue sticky notes are for general questions and comments. Green sticky notes are for questions that we might like to pose to the public. Go forth, have fun. I'll reconvene us around 7 p.m. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that this conversation about where the conversation goes from here can be part of the record. Yeah, no, thank you. So we've had, I think, a very substantive 90 minutes in our, what we're calling our mapping workshop. I know I contributed a lot of sticky notes to the maps that NS Associates created and laid out for us. Thank you so much. I definitely saw a lot of sticky notes from other Councilors and department heads, members of the public. The intent for the second half or the final third of this meeting was to kind of briefly recap the mapping workshop. If anybody feels called to, you know, kind of shout out a thread that they heard or discussed or saw very often, or if there's any major bottom lines that they wanted to articulate that they wrote down or talked about with other attendees. I think we can speak to that. And then the other intent for this part of the meeting was to discuss our kind of most immediate next steps on the housing strategies piece of this work, as well as our most immediate next steps on our two priority corridors, those being Salem Street and Mystic Ave. So like for Innis Associates, department heads, Councilors, feel free to speak to any part of that. I think that all of these are obviously very intertwined. I think that a lot of our comments from the mapping workshop are going to touch on those priority issues. So if any of my fellow Councilors would like to raise any thoughts, questions that came up during the mapping workshop, I'm happy to turn it over to Emily and Paula to discuss our next steps on the corridors and housing. Seeing none, we can popcorn around.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you very much. Can you hear me from here or should I move it forward? Okay, just making sure. So first of all, thank you very much for taking the time I think when we presented the maps last time there's only so much information you can get on a screen. And so we appreciate you taking the time to really look at depth we can't wait to read all your comments. I think we'd really like to hear if there's any particular theme to want to make sure get captured by the public record I know, talking with each of you individually. There were a couple of ideas that came up that range from point systems for public benefits which could be. a green score, different methods of construction that make a difference on what can be built where and how we can address that in the zoning to make sure that we're seeing what we need. I think geographical priorities were something else that we heard, adding to the definitions. looking at co-housing, other ideas. And then some of it is just the maps are telling us something that maybe we thought we knew already. So for example, things like, oh, those older single family neighborhoods or single and two family neighborhoods that everybody loves. they can't be built today because they are all out of conformity with these existing zoning. So we know we have a lot of work to do in thinking about which areas we just simply need to right-size the zoning and which we need to enhance. Pella, anything you wanted to add?
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I think you covered pretty much, especially on the corridors, all these non-conformities that we are we are looking at not only on the corridors, also on the areas adjacent that are pretty obvious that we need to look into. Lot sizes, front setbacks, lot coverages, so things that we are seeing that needs to be adjusted and that we see that all of you are also pretty much in the same lane.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think for the next steps is we want to take away what we heard tonight and what we'll see when we get your comments home and then start building out that framework for addressing the two corridors. We talked about the idea of where applying some of the concepts we worked with during the spring to geographic areas that we would like to do the corridors now and maybe take on a square next. Because there are different development types and Bedford Square is obviously, you know, a good candidate given the level of public planning that's been done for that area already. But now that we can apply those concepts to geographic area come back and show you what that framework looks like. And then incorporating the housing discussions because that's going to start moving through, not just these two quarters but the squares and the other quarters as well so really starting to balance a lot of thematic approaches we talked about the spring, and a much more real way and much more targeted way to specific geographic areas.
[SPEAKER_04]: Great. Thank you so much. I know for myself as one Councilor, I think we've been talking about a lot of the same priorities for a lot of this term and prior to that. you know, including when you were assisting the city of Medford in a previous role, helping us with our comprehensive planning. And so it's, it's exciting to get to the point where, you know, we're kind of visualizing and articulating a lot of these goals in various ways. And our next step being to, you know, use our use you as our technical assistance in bringing these goals into language into the zoning changes. First, in these priority corridors, expanding into the squares and kind of having these global strategies inform corridor strategies and vice versa. And I think it makes a lot of sense procedurally to focus on certain geographic areas, have those discussions of what do we know that we want for this zone? What are people already asking for? What have people been asking for for Mystic Ave, for Salem Street, for Medford Square for years? What changes need to be made that make sense for this area? what makes sense for the area adjacent to that, adjacent to that, what strategies make sense for the community overall. So I think this is the beginning of an exciting process. In terms of our next steps, I know that several of these strategies are already in the works. We've talked before, for example, one out of many for making ADUs by right. I know that there are several items in the queue that we might expect to see. We might be able to review language at a meeting soon. Are there any updated thoughts on what pieces of language you might like the Council to review and give feedback on at our next meeting or the one after that, whether it's a global strategy or, you know, addressing the corridors first?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, it's interesting that you mentioned ADUs because, of course, there's something happening at the state level, potentially, with ADUs, so we're kind of waiting to see what happens there. I think, you know, what we'd like to do is, I think the next meeting of yours is in August, towards the end of August. We'd like to bring something to start off with to that, probably that framework that I talked about. I could be wrong on the date. but talk about the framework for that, and then really get into having text for September.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm so sorry, could you repeat the last part? The sound is very loud.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, sorry, and I'm masked up too, which doesn't help. So the idea is that we would come to you with that framework discussion of kind of how these pieces start to fit together for these two corridors in August, so you can see how that fits in, and then continue to develop that and have actual language coming forward in September.
[SPEAKER_04]: that's great. President Beresford.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. I think what might be also helpful to bring for August is now that we kind of have, I think we have like a starting point for the corridors. Sounds like we're going to do Medford Square as a starting point for the square, the squares. We might want to pick a type of zone as a starting point for the neighborhoods. And then I think it would be really useful for us to sketch out our remaining, at least that one, you know, we were kind of, we're having the two meetings a month that we had talked about in the past, one meeting being more on these like geographic trends and then the other being kind of on the citywide policies. I think at this point, it might be good for us in August to at least have like a consideration of, what we'll be considering for the geographic for the remaining meetings, I think all the way out through next summer so that we can start saying to the public. We're going to be talking about language for the Salem street corridor. This is the meeting to come to for that mystic app. Maybe it's Salem and mystic at the same one Medford square, you know, in October, uh, single family or whatever, we're going to call it the residential district that, that neighborhood district in November, so that people can start to get attuned and we can start messaging to the public. here's when to show up for your neighborhood, and here's when we're going to have the public meeting on your neighborhood and get your input. And then I think the other thing that will be helpful, um, is prior to that meeting, um, for each area, being able to have a one page or two explain like, this is what these changes would mean and look like in your neighborhood. And I think that's just a good way for us to, um, have involved folks who want to be involved in the different geographic areas and the different, um, you know, changes in their neighborhoods, which I know there are many people who will want to, are interested in that, but also do it in a, like a, like procedurally constructive way that allows us to move forward on these items while also making it clear to residents, like this is when we're going to be talking about your area. And I don't think we could work. I don't think we'll get it a hundred percent, right. You know, that will meet every single meeting will be the one for that we've outlined, but I think we should at least, Try to do that and at least give like the order in which we're going to hit them. So maybe some sort of like light early draft of that for August that we could consider I think would be helpful. And I think that will make clear to the public for the rest of the process. Like a, we've heard a lot from a lot of people for a long time about the comp plan and the housing production plan and the climate plan and all these Medford square plans and the neighborhood conversations. And also the conversations that we just have with neighbors or we have on the campaign trail, like there's been a ton of public input already. Um, here's the containers for the, uh, where we're going to have that for especially those geographic, uh, neighborhood type questions.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think that's a great idea we can we can put that together and maybe you know we have the ginormous gap chart. I don't think that's going to work very well for the public so maybe it's just a simple list of the meetings going out and here's the topic by for each meeting, just so that people can know I'm interested in. climate action, I can come to this meeting. I'm interested in West Medford Square and come to that meeting. So yeah, I think that would work out really well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's more important for the geographic side as well of like, it might be worth us coming to me and saying, like, here are the core, like, Salem Street Corridor, Mystic Ave Corridor, High Street, Main Street, and Mystic Valley Parkway, maybe those are our five corridor, I don't know if those are, like, maybe we should talk about that. West Medford Square, South Medford Square, Haines Square, Medford Square, those are our squares. And then neighborhoods, you know, I think we could say, if you're currently in an SF one or SF two, we're going to be talking about a new type of district for those. If you're currently in and people, you know, that might not be as easy for people to know. Um, maybe we could put the neighborhood, the general neighborhood names of where those districts are as part of it. Um, but basically get down to like, here's where we think the districts are going to be. We think there's going to be 12 or so areas slash districts. Um, and then we can outline like when we're going to be meeting on them. I think it also applies on the other side of climate action, the housing, etc. But yeah, I'm not sure people will be as tuned in. I think that people are gonna be like, oh, you're changing my neighborhood. I want to be a part of that in some way. Some people will be.
[SPEAKER_01]: Madam Chair, I wanted to raise just a couple of like big pictures, like sort of FYI and things just to think about as we're mulling this over, because some of the areas we're clearly already working on, and I think it's helpful both I think everybody in this room has heard it before, but for the public, the two corridors that we're doing, that we've put forward first, the Salem and the Mystic Ave, are because we've really been seeing development pressure there, and that what people wanna build and what we wanna see don't match the current zoning. So that's an urgency. I think it is useful, and the other one then is gonna be Medford Square, because we are, in fact, getting ready to do the RFP, to the parcels in Medford Square, there is a goal to be having draft language out that we can circulate end of August, early September, with the goal of putting this language, this actually out in September for bid. Sorry, I hope I didn't spill the beans on that, but FYI. For West Medford and Wellington, we have gotten grant funding to do studies of those areas. And it's been a little tug of war to get the money actually available to use. But I think we're very close to contracting for the study in West Medford. I actually have an email that came in this evening about that. And then the Wellington Circle one, we put it out to bid once before. It's that region around the circle. And basically, we were told that we didn't have enough money, but we've now gotten more money, thanks to the Gaming Commission. So we need to put that one back out to bid, because it's a lot of money. So we are sort of intentionally holding off with making any major, major changes in those areas, because we would like to see the results of those studies to inform the changes we do. Obviously, if there are blanket changes to the city that would impact, if there's anything that's urgent, we can talk about it. With regards to the neighborhood, I think it's useful for people to just start thinking about this. We have had a single family one, single family two, and the difference between them is the lot size. and we have a general residential. And what's allowed is different in that one. When you look at our lot sizes, I happen to be sitting in front of the lot size map. The lot sizes, as people might guess, are very different in the West Medford Lawrence Estates area than everything south of the river, the hillside and South Medford areas. And then the area that's commonly known as brain stopped, you know, well Fulton Heights and then the area below it around Spring Street and all those areas are sort of a mix. And we may want to think about do we want the same lot size requirements in all of these areas? Do we want the same setbacks? You'll find that they all right now have a 15 foot setback. If you look at the map of nonconformities by setback for South Medford, They don't have 15 foot setbacks. Everybody knows that. Do we want it? Like if somebody built a new house, it doesn't seem to me. And do you want to make them go through a zoning variance? So we may actually want to start looking at some of these neighborhoods and saying, like, do we want different dimensions by neighborhood? And so I just sort of like start to think about that. And what are the things that are important and aren't important? Because we'll want to get in the weeds around that as well at some point. and it's a lot easier if you've slept on it. And so one of the things that I had mentioned at the beginning, I'd really love to put these maps up on our website so people can see them, so everybody can see them, people can reference them. They're fascinating to zoom into. I was using a magnifying glass on parts of it. I was fascinated. And then I think that we'll put a note next to it. At this point, I would offer that we could use the email address I'm wondering if we should repurpose the comp plan email address, actually, if that would be more appropriate than my office's email address, because we still have, it's c-o-m-p-p-l-a-n at medford-ma.gov, and we could have comments and thoughts from anybody, the public go there, and then we can just sort of take in, you know, if somebody cares enough to send an email to that address, we wanna hear what they have to say, if that kind of works for people. And that can be an open, just an open place.
[SPEAKER_06]: Go ahead.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I think that's, that's super helpful to understand, um, that like Wellington and maybe Wellington and West Bedford square are later in the process. I mean, I think that for me, the one thing I want to, I think we need to prioritize, like, I agree that there may be needs for different, dimensional requirements based on like what neighborhoods look like, but I also think we need to avoid the idea of, you know, just because West Medford has had the zoning that it's had, and you can see it on some of the demographic and census stuff, that it gets to not have to have the setbacks where South Medford is going to have a five foot setback or no setback. Like, I think we need to, make sure that the places in the city that have had the most exclusionary zoning are pitching in. I'm not saying West Medford, you know, up by Tower Park, suddenly you can have a zero setback six foot office building or anything like that. But I think distributionally, like, I personally don't think other than maybe some construction stuff like that, we should be treating what is like an SF2 in the Heights and an SF1 in West Medford that differently in future zoning. And I also think that where the studies may inform like future specialization in the Wellington or West Medford areas that let's say that those studies aren't going to be complete by the time we're targeting completion of this project, that we at least need to bring those up to a comparable baseline with the other squares that we may be doing now and the other quarters that we may be doing now. and then allow the results of those studies to, in the future, then further adjust and change those areas. Because I don't think, like, let's say we do Medford Square, and we also are able to do Hayden Square as part of the Salem Street corridor, and maybe even South Medford Square, I think we'll end up down this road again, where people say, But West Medford Square is not bearing any of the burden of these changes. And the answer may be, well, that's because the study is not done yet, but I don't think that's what like people are going to experience or feel. So my inclination would be that if we end up doing a Haines Square and a Medford Square and maybe South Medford Square, that like we have to bring West Medford up to at least that baseline and then allow the study to adjust that going forward. So I just wanted to throw those two things out there, but I think in general, everything you said makes sense. And I think like on the city-wide side of the non-geographic district-based stuff, I think there's some studies out there, right, like the Nexus thing and some other stuff that will be coming up later. So maybe those are the later scheduled things on that track of the project.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for that discussion. I'm inclined to agree that if we have a window of opportunity to, in a reasonable baseline that seems unproblematic, I like taking opportunities to make improvements when they avail themselves, knowing that, knowing and telegraphing that an opportunity for more tailored tweaks and further amendments will be shortly forthcoming as well. And kind of towards the same point, I think that It would be great to, even if it evolves over the course of the year, to have that draft timeline of when we're going to be discussing particular corridors, neighborhoods, to be able to broadcast that early and also broadcast when those meetings get shuffled around. I think that that will sort of help reinforce for people. through another way, what this project is all about, which is hitting all of our priority areas, having this comprehensive approach and breaking down when different pieces of it are going to happen. That'll help keep us on schedule as well. Any other questions or comments from Councilors in this department heads about our next steps for August? and they're on afterwards, or any other threads that we want to call out from the mapping workshop earlier? There's a lot of great stuff, but I know we discussed it very in-depth around the tables.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I just want to say that I think they're really awesome, and it's great to have the conversations and look at the maps. We had some folks in and out. I know the assessor, Koskin, I think Todd Blake was in and out, so some folks interested who aren't day-to-day part of the project.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'll echo that. It was great to have that discussion include people who aren't, you know, always a part of these conversations. And I hope we can, you know, have that again at our conversations that are more neighborhood and corridor and other specific focuses.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I think with your permission, we would like to repeat this exercise as we move into the other geographic areas, because I think being able to take the time to really look in depth at the maps and then, as Director Hunt pointed out, put them online so other people have that benefit of being able to zoom in and out and take enough time would be really helpful as we move to each new area.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yep, totally agree. I think it's just a value add. Great, well, thank you so much for your hard work that went into the format of this meeting. I'm excited at our meeting in August to begin to dig in deeper on the corridors, begin that granular moving outward kind of conversation and to sketch out a plan for how to approach that through next spring. Any other closing comments from councilors or other attendees? Seeing none, thank you all so much for a really productive conversation, a really productive exercise. Really grateful to everybody for being here. Moved to adjourn. Seconded by President Bears. All those in favor? Aye. All opposed? Meeting is adjourned. Thank you so much, everybody.